Politics, Identity, Territory.
The “Strength” and “Value” of Nation-State,
the Weakness of Regional Challenge
Gaspare Nevola
The post Cold War age reveals itself as being characterized mostly by the flourishing of “identity
politics”. Identitary issues affect the public dimension of collective life and they often develop
into economic, legal, political terms. There are many types of collective identity. We would clarify
some of them in order to focus the analytical tools that are necessary to face the phenomena we
are interested with: national and regional identities. Crucial in our argument are the concept of
“political identity” and its “territorial” dimension. This concept and this dimension consent to
compare Nation-State and (sub-national) region as space of collective life, and their “authoritative”
degree. According to this subject this essay will treat the following points: the return of identity
politics nowadays (section 1); the concept of collective identity (section 2); the many faces of
collective identity (section 3); the relationship among politics, territory and identity, analyzed
through the paradigmatic case of Nation-state and national identity (section 4); the structuring of
political space between centre and peripheries, where we consider how the dominance of NationState model has to face persisting of territorial cleavages (section 5); the case of the regional issue
(section 6); the “strength” and the “value” of Nation-State (sections 7 and 8).
Gaspare Nevola is professor of Political Science, Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento. He is
member of the Board of the Doctoral School in Political Science, University of Pavia. His study
areas include: political culture, identity and public rituals; transformation and legitimation
problem of contemporary democracy; liberal and communitarian political theory; religion and
politics in post-secular democratic society; political unification process. Among his publications: A
Constitutional Patriotism for Italian Democracy, in «Bulletin of Italian Politics» (2011, forthcoming);
The Territorial-Identitary Side of a Democracy, in M. Huysseune (ed.), Contemporary Centrifugal
Regionalism, The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (2011); Democrazia,
Costituzione, Identità, Utet (2007); Il malessere della democrazia contemporanea e la sfida
dell’“incantesimo democratico”, in «Il Politico» (2007); Una patria per gli italiani?, Carocci (2003).
ISSN 1828 - 955 X
Politics, Identity, Territory.
The “Strength” and “Value” of Nation-State,
the Weakness of Regional Challenge
Gaspare Nevola
DIPARTIMENTO DI SOCIOLOGIA E RICERCA SOCIALE
QUADERNO 58
DIPARTIMENTO DI SOCIOLOGIA E
RICERCA SOCIALE
QUADERNI
POLITICS, IDENTITY, TERRITORY.
THE “STRENGTH” AND “VALUE”
OF NATION-STATE, THE WEAKNESS
OF REGIONAL CHALLENGE
GASPARE NEVOLA
QUADERNO 58
Ottobre 2011
CONTENTS
Introduction
p 7
1.
The flourishing of identity politics today
2.
On the concept of collective identity: for a redefinition beyond misunderstanding
13
3.
The numerous faces of collective identity
23
4.
Politics, territory, identity: the paradigmatic case of
Nation-State
30
5.
The structuring of political space between centre
and peripheries: Nation-State and the persistence of
territorial cleavages
41
6.
Some observations on the regional identity question
45
7.
On the “strength” of national identity
50
8.
On the “value” of national identity
53
References
8
59
5
Introduction
The post Cold War age reveals itself as being characterized
mostly by the flourishing of “identity politics”. Identitary issues
affect the public dimension of collective life and they often
develop into economic, legal, political terms. There are many
types of collective identity. We would clarify some of them in
order to focus the analytical tools that are necessary to face the
phenomena we are interested with: national and regional
identities. Crucial in our argument are the concept of “political
identity” and its “territorial” dimension.
This concept and this dimension consent to compare NationState and (sub-national) region as space of collective life, and their
“authoritative” degree; they consent to consider the regional
claims in front of Nation-State as well as the persistent primacy of
the latter as a system structuring “political territory” and the
modern democracy. Remind the “deep reasons” of the NationState historical success as structuring system of political life helps
us to understand its contemporary strength and value in front of
the usually weakness of the challenger-region. These reasons deal
with the politics of identity, at least as much as with the power
and the monopoly of the legitimated use of the force. Moreover,
during the international terrorism crisis that exploded on
September 11 and the economic crisis of the past few years, the
centrality of the Nation-State has forcefully re-emerged: for
example, in the economic-financial, military, public-security and
migration fields. The Nation-State has once again shown itself to
be a solid political construct, as well as being flexible and with
abundant resources not readily available to the other sorts of
political organization (super-national or sub-national or even ones
of other kinds) that compete with it and challenge its political
primacy, sometimes seeking to erode its sovereignty.
Understanding the factors that underlie the political persistence of
the Nation-State requires focusing on the political nature of this
kind of collective life organization and going beyond its reduction
to a pure administrative, legal, and economical apparatus. It also
requires addressing the issue of the collective identity and the
distinctive political-identitary model which the Nation-State has
been able to give itself through a centuries-long process.
7
According to this subject, this essay will treat the following
points: the return of identity politics nowadays (section 1); the
concept of collective identity (section 2); the many faces of
collective identity (section 3); the relationship among politics,
territory and identity, analyzed through the paradigmatic case of
Nation-State and national identity (section 4); the structuring of
political space between centre and peripheries, where we consider
how the dominance of Nation-State model has to face persisting
of territorial cleavages (section 5); the case of the regional issue
(section 6); the final parts deal with the “strength” and the “value”
of Nation-State (sections 7 and 8), and try to show how and why
the Nation-State survival and resurgence are linked with the
identitary-territorial dimension of politics that still characterizes
contemporary world.
1. The flourishing of identity politics today
1989 marked the demise and the de-freezing of the geopolitical
structure characteristic of the “Cold War” period. Some view 1989
as the end of the “short century” [Hobsbawm 1994], others link
that date to the beginning of the globalization era [see e.g. Beck
1997], while yet others view globalization as the “end of history”
[Fukuyama 1992]. Interpreted in this way, 1989 was a
misunderstanding (an illusion to some, a nightmare to others).
On looking beyond the ideological pretensions of neoliberalism 1, we see that the waning of communism, the
liberalization of the exchange economy, and the revolution in
communication technologies, have not unified the world; nor
have they homogenised the patterns and practices of social and
political life. And history continues to move forward. It does so
for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the presumed integration of
economic and political systems and the uniformity of cultural
patterns, as well of ideological and religious attitudes, have mostly
involved the West, to which other areas of the world have
remained alien or hostile (East, South and especially the partially
1 For a brief description of neoliberalism and its success see Lee Mudge [2008]; for a
more critical point of view see Harvey [2005].
8
territorialized Islamic world) [see Barber 1995; Huntington 1996].
Secondly, the West’s tendency towards globalization within its
own borders combines with a tendency towards “fragmentation”
[see e. g. Clark 1997], with a post-modern localism or even the
persistence of a traditional localism [see Sassen 2007]. In the post1989 world the drives for fragmentation manifest themselves in a
variety of processes: social-economic and cultural diversification,
territorial localization of corporations and global circuits of
techno-communications, continuous political and territorial
fragmentation and re-composition (on inter-State, intra-State and
cross-border levels). Federalism, regionalism, secessionism,
communitarianism, nationalism and micro-nationalism (often of a
religious or ethnic nature): these notions, in different ways,
describe a world that is neither unified nor kept in peace by the
action of a new global order; they instead characterize a divided
world in which unrest is overt, sometimes violent sometimes
simmering. Finally, the opposing dynamics of globalization and
fragmentation “put history on the move again” and prove to be
sources of tension for the Nation-State – that is, for the model
and experience of political-cultural organization that has been the
absolute protagonist on the historical stage for the centuries since
the beginning of the modern age. The Nation-State established
itself as the primary spatial delimitation and institutional regulation
system for internal and international processes regarding
economic, power, legitimization and collective belonging.
Globalization and fragmentation both challenge this fundamental
pillar of Western modernity. But instead of being dead or
obsolete, the Nation-State has reacted robustly to such supernational and sub-national pressures 2.
Within this framework, the “post-cold war age” is
characterized mostly by the flourishing of “identity politics” [see
Touraine 1997; Castells 1997; Maalouf 1998; Friedman 1999;
Girad 2001; Benhabib 2002; Apter 2003; Bauman 2003; Hall 2008;
Todorov 2008; Moisi 2009; Ollivier 2009]. The identification of an
individual with one group rather than another, self- and heterorecognition of collective identities, identity opposition between
2 This is also recognized by an analysis in many respects critical of the continuing
centrality of the Nation-State in the contemporary age: see Sassen [2007].
9
groups: these are the main factors that fill politics with “identitary
issues” in the modern and “post-modern” world. As has been
argued, in the contemporary world it is group identity that counts
most: the country, the religious or ethnic group, the race, the
“nation of sexual preferences” [see Friedman 1999].
In its collective manifestation, the “identitary fact” assumes
forms that are micro as well as macro-social, pacific as well as
violent. Today identitary politics involves, for example, gender
distinction policies or the rights of homosexuals, redefinition of
“couple”, “family”, parent (father, mother), the treatment of
minorities, or legislation on sensitive issues concerning ethics and
religion (assisted procreation, euthanasia, the cloning of human
cells). They also concern the definition and defense of the “local
cultures” included or excluded from citizenship, the inter-ethnic
or multiculturalist relations on communitarian bases, the
universalism of human rights, globalism, Occidentalism, Islamism,
laicism, patriotism, economic protectionism; or, again, the ethnic
and religious conflicts, the “ethnic cleaning”, the “clash of
civilizations”, the humanitarian interventions, and so on. The
importance of “identity” can be explained by the fact that
identitary questions do not have only a historical-literary
importance, perhaps of interest to a cultured elite: they have
existential and social reverberations on the everyday lives of both
individuals, groups and institutions. Identitary issues affect the
public dimension of collective life and they often develop into
economic, legal, political questions. The identity issue, in
particular as regards collective identity, has become increasingly
important for policy-makers [see Friedman 1999].
In recent years, in particular, the “brave new world” which
many analysts envisaged after 1989 3 has became somewhat
obsolete because of the rise of identity politics (or the identitary
dimension of politics). The vision of a peaceful and harmonic
world collapsed, lastly, with the September 11 attacks, the wars
against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Saddam Hussein in
Iraq, or it slid into destructive international financial crises and
3 In Kissinger view, instead, it has been the spread of international terrorism and the
wars of the beginning of the twenty-first century to mark the end of the international
system born with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. See H. Kissinger, interview, “La Stampa”,
8 may 2003.
10
their social consequences, into anti- or new-global movement
protests. The presumed primacy of the functional dimension has
declined. In this context, it is to consider with attention the idea
that the problems of collective life are no longer reducible to
technical, economic or legal problems. Politics and its identitary
rootedness have returned. To better understand such
developments, that is contemporary politics and our social life,
political and social sciences have to drive their attention to the
“political culture” dimension of the society. As it will become
clear in the following pages, this essays is a theoretical and
interpretative contribution in this direction.
Actually, the image of a “new world” unified and pacified on
the basis of the primacy of economic principles of free global
trade, juridical globalism and the universalism of human rights was
criticized as soon as it emerged from the fall of the Berlin Wall
[see Dahrendorf, Furet, Geremek 1992; Brzezinski 1993]. In
particular, Samuel Huntington’s well-known thesis expressed
more forcefully than others a different interpretation of the
principles regulating politics and the international system after the
Cold War 4. But Huntington’s thesis has often been discussed
from partial or equivocal points of view. Its critics and supporters
have mainly discussed the persuasiveness of the claim that it is the
destiny of civilizations to conflict with each other; or the
plausibility of the contention that one civilization (especially the
Western one) is superior to others. The more convincing
arguments provided by Huntington are instead different, and
more sophisticated.
First, the idea that the world cannot be considered “unified”
according to any regulating principle (neither economic, legal,
ideological, cultural, religious nor political); or rather the idea that
one unique “universal” civilization does not exist: history and the
contemporary world exhibit the existence of a variety of
“particular” civilities. The conception of “civility” (in the singular)
is typical of a certain vocation to universalism that characterizes
Western civilisation; but it has several factual limitations and gives
4 See Huntington 1996. Huntington’s thesis obtained great public resonance after the
2001 Islamist terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the subsequent ones
in London and Madrid (to refer only to Europe). In the meantime criticisms of
Huntington’s have increased. See e.g. Courbage, Todd [2007]; Appiah [2006].
11
rise to ethical-political risks or paradoxes (especially when a
“civilizing mission” encounters the resistance of those who are to
be civilized) 5. An important consequence of the “clash of
civilizations” thesis is that value systems, social practices, and
institutions extraneous to a certain civilization are not to be
classified as barbaric. From this point of view Huntington
proposes a vision which important currents of classical European
liberalism used to embrace. He reformulates, in his own way, the
Weberian thesis of “values polytheism” and opposes it to that of
“values monotheism”. The possibility of a “clash of civilizations”
should be located and interpreted within the conceptual
framework of this “conflict among values” 6. Moreover, it does
not necessarily imply “values relativism”, nor does it necessarily
exclude the possibility of a “dialogue among civilizations” as well
as confrontation between values.
Secondly, and most importantly, Huntington stresses that a
dimension which many observers used to consider residual is
today imposing itself to structure the cleavages and the regulatory
principles of contemporary politics: the cultural or identitary
(often religious) dimension. “The central theme of this book”,
Huntington writes, “is that culture and cultural identities, which at
the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the pattern
of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War
world” 7.
This re-definition of the divisional lines and regulation
principles, from an economic-functional to a cultural-identitary
level, has created a new context for international system dynamics,
for the European integration process, and for political life itself
within the Nation-States. It is no accident that the 1990s
witnessed the maturation first, and the weakening thereafter, of
the logic of “governance without government” at an international
5 This issue has been discussed, from different points of view, by Berger, Berger,
Kellner [1973]; Todorov [1989]; Walzer [1991].
6 During the twentieth century, this conception was thematized in masterly and
dramatic manner by Weber. See also Schmitt [1967]. But it was thereafter formulated also
outside continental European thought: for instance in the political philosophy of Berlin
[1969]; Walzer [1977]; Hampshire [2000]. On the debate sparked by the events of 11
September 2001, see the interesting Various Authors [2002].
7 Huntington [1996, 20]. For a similar (though less dramatic) interpretation see Smith
[1995].
12
and intra-national level inspired by relational criteria of an
economic-functional 8.
Moreover, during the international terrorism crisis that
exploded on September 11 and the economic crisis exploded over
the past few years, the centrality of the Nation-State has forcefully
re-emerged: for example, in the economic-financial, military,
public-security and migration fields. The Nation-State has once
again shown itself to be a solid political construct, as well as being
flexible and with abundant resources not readily available to the
other sorts of political organization (super-national or subnational or even ones of other kinds) that compete with it and
challenge its political primacy, sometimes seeking to erode its
sovereignty. Understanding the factors that underlie the political
persistence of the Nation-State requires focusing on the political
nature of this kind of collective life organization and going
beyond its reduction to a pure administrative, legal, and
economical apparatus. It also requires addressing the issue of the
collective identity and the distinctive political-identitary model
which the Nation-State has been able to give itself through a
centuries-long process.
In this framework, the issue of national identity is flanked by
that of regional identity: these are the two types of collective
identity that are examined here 9. But first necessary is brief
discussion on the concept of collective identity.
2. On the concept of collective identity: for a re-definition beyond
misunderstanding
The concept of identity refers in the first place to a feeling and
a consciousness of a self that remains itself in face of others and
notwithstanding change. The formation of identity depends on
8 This logic and these criteria, for example, had driven the process of European
integration according to the “Maastricht model”. But they revealed their shortcomings at
the political level (characterized by goals and demands connected with identity). See Nevola
[2007a]. On the logic of “governance without government” see Rosenau, Czempiel [1992].
9 Within the frame of the hypothesis of “super-national” European integration
process, the issue of national identity is also flanked by that of European identity. See
Nevola [2007a].
13
intricate processes of self-recognition and hetero-recognition.
Identity, in different words, consists in the form and content of
the answers to questions like “who am I?” “Who are you?” “Who
is he/she?” In all these cases we talk, more precisely, about
“individual identity” – even if it has public or social connotations.
However, “we also can, and do, identify ourselves in terms
that go beyond the self, that link the self with some other entity or
group”. In this second case, “Identity for most of us means being
part of a group” 10. The concept of “collective identity” refers to
this phenomenon 11. A collective identity reflects the sense of
belonging to a group, where groups are variable by nature, size or
other features 12. The contemporary social sciences pay particular
attention to the themes of collective identity and identity
politics 13. Although the expression “collective identity” has
became familiar even in everyday language, in the social sciences
its meaning is disputed – at both the explanatory and normative
levels 14. The concept has sometimes been radically questioned in
cases where it is referred to an extensive “social group”, such as
the one that we call “society” 15. According to more moderate
critics, however, the concept of collective identity may be
appropriate, at most, for traditional societies characterized – in the
current view – by a status of stasis, or by slow and imperceptible
social change 16. In this case, moreover, the collective identity is
perceived in “essentialist” terms as a typically closed, rigid,
exclusive identity. In modern and industrial, post-modern or postThe quotations are from Friedman [1999, 3].
To be emphasised is that the collective identity is constitutive of individual identity.
This idea, widespread in the sociological and philosophical tradition, has been relaunched
in the past thirty years by neo-communitarian political theory. See e.g. Taylor [1989; 1991];
MacIntyre [1981]; Sandel [1982; 2009]. For a sociological point of view see Bellah et al.
[1985]; Seligman [2000]. For a brief survey Nevola [2010].
12 As in the cases, to cite not the usual ones, of religious sects, groups of football team
fans, groups of animal rights or vegetarian activists, the families of Mafia victims, mothers
of desaparecidoses, homosexuals, feminists, etc.
13 As recently illustrated by e.g. Rost, Stoelting [2005]; Rost [2005].
14 These controversies have arisen mainly in sociological theory and anthropology. For
a survey of the main issues see Gordon, Gergen [1968]; Sciolla [1983]; Rusconi [1984];
Pollini [1987]. See also Goffman [1961]; Levi-Strauss [1977]; Pizzorno [1977]; Gallino
[1982]; Melucci [1982]; Barbano [1983]; Bellah et al. [1985]; for more recent developments
see Assmann [1992]; Eisenstadt [1993]; Martin [1995]; Castells [1997]; Dubar [2000];
Seligman [2000]; Sciolla [2007]; in more political terms de Benoit [2005]; Baechler [2011].
15 This, for example, is the criticism made by Berger, Luckmann [1966].
16 As exemplified by Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “cold societies”.
10
11
14
industrial societies, these identificationary features are regarded as
being in constant decline. The consequence, on a theoretical level,
of these historical transformations of society should be the
uselessness of “identity language” for the understanding of social,
cultural and political phenomena in the contemporary world. A
similar argument has been put forward by Alain Touraine when he
argues, for example, that “the strength of a society seems to
increase in line with the slowness of its change and with the ability
to reproduce its behavioural codes exactly. When we consider the
most industrialized societies, we may even doubt the utility of the
notion “society”. We think that such a notion implies the
existence of a unity and an identity which we can no longer find in
the reality we are observing”. From this it follows, according to
Touraine, that “Nowadays… we must get rid of the idea of
society and, consequently, get rid of any identitary representation
of social life, recognizing that social reality is nowhere near an
expression of an essence, an esprit, a will, and that it is nothing
other than a fragile outcome, only partially coherent and
constantly changing, of an ensemble of social relational networks
and networks based on dominance, influence and authority, and
which imply conflicts, compromises and deviations” [Touraine
1983, 157 and 157-58; see also Touraine 1992; 1997].
On these bases it has been denied that the collective identity is
a relevant topic for social sciences or a resource for the
democratic societies of our time, and argued that when collective
identity re-emerges it is a threat to integration and the functioning
of democracy. From this perspective the return of collective
identities is criticized as a regressive, anachronistic or residual
phenomenon, as an “identity populism” characterized by a strong
and noxious introduction of “emotive tension” into political
questions – as happens, for example, with immigration,
patriotism, micro-nationalism, regional separatism, or religious
fundamentalism [see Laplantine 1999; Luverà 1999; Remotti 2001;
2010; Azzariti 2005; Sen 2006].
This rejection of “identity language”, I believe, raises
numerous doubts and seems generally unconvincing. My counterargument is based on two main considerations. The first is
empirical and entails the intellectual duty of taking the persistence
of identitary phenomena for granted; the second consideration is
15
theoretical-conceptual and suggests that a conception of collective
identity different from the current one is possible 17. In regard to
the first point I reiterate the observations made in the previous
section. I shall therefore dwell on the second point.
A collective identity should not necessarily be understood in
“essentialist”, naturalist and monolithic terms 18. It can be
conceived as flexible, relational, and open to change and to
confrontation with “alterity”. This last conception of collective
identity proves useful for the analysis of contemporary society
and, under some conditions, coherent with the ethical-political
values of present-day democracy. To delineate this conception of
collective identity we can draw on some of Jürgen Habermas’s
ideas concerning the “complex societies” of the contemporary
world. A critical revision of them in regard to certain important
questions can be useful in re-formulating the notion of collective
identity in light of the theme of interest here.
In an important essay concerning collective identity, Habermas
explicitly posits a “language of identities” alongside the “complex
societies” of our time: that is to say, the modern or post-modern
societies [see Habermas 1974]. For this reason he passes positive
judgement on the use of the collective identity concept by
referring to a large ensemble of individuals (as a society), and not
just to the social identity of the single individuals that form it. The
category of “complex societies” obviously also includes the
liberal-democratic, pluralistic, dynamic and secularized societies of
our time; besides, the traditional or “cold” societies, characterized
by immobilization or by a low level of change, are certainly not
the ones for which social sciences in the 1970s used with
insistence the paradigm of complexity.
On this basis, Habermas emphasises first that a complex
society produces its identity in a peculiar way and the maintaining
or losing of it depends on the society itself [see Habermas 1974].
This argument, developed within the framework of Habermas’s
theory of “communicative action” [see Habermas 1981; 1992], is
17 I have written elsewhere on normative aspects concerning the political issues of
“identity reasons” and the “need for collective identity”. See Nevola [1997a; 2003a; 2003d;
2006; 2007a; 2007b].
18 For a typology of conceptions of collective identity see Rost, Stoelting [2005]; Rost
[2005].
16
interesting because it states that the “collective identity” is not a
“natural entity”, an “essence” that is given in nature and
definitively so (although in some circumstances it can be
“represented” as natural) 19: it is instead a “product”, a “social
construct”. The fact that an identity is “constructed” or
“invented” does not mean, however, that the identity “does not
exist”, that it is not a “social reality” 20: once constructed or
invented it “exists” as its social, cultural, political effects.
“Artificial” does not mean “unreal” 21. Neither does it follow that
such an identity is constructible or modifiable, or that it can be
planned freely, as some studies on the topic suggest. A collective
identity, in fact, is not simply the direct product of actions that are
intentional, rational and transparent (individual or collective). It is
instead the consequence of a blend of social interactions
(intentional and unintentional), of their social and historical
sedimentation and condensation, of their “objectification” –
according to a view in which “methodological holism” helps
“methodological individualism” 22. Within this interpretative
framework it makes sense, in my view, to argue that a collective
identity is “a variable product of collective action” 23.
Secondly, Habermas’s conception clarifies the problem of the
“maintenance” of a collective identity, and it addresses the
19 This does not gainsay the importance of the “naturalistic” conception of collective
identity. At the level of political culture, or as Bordieu [1996; 2000] puts it, the “political
field”, this “naturalistic” representation of a collective identity has in fact a politicalstrategic purpose: the actors concerned deliberately pursue instrumental ends, thus giving it
“existence”. This is a socio-cultural and political phenomenon widely analysed in the social
and political sciences. See e.g. Nevola [1998]; Rost [2005]; Rost, Stoelting [2005].
20 This thesis is especially (but not only) widespread in the “post-modern” social
sciences. See e.g. Brubaker [1996]. But it can be easily rejected by drawing, for instance, on
the classic sociological theory of Weber and Durkheim and their conceptions, respectively,
of “culture” and “social representations”.
21 See, to give just one example, the case of the Mohicans of New England, cited by
Kertzer [1988].
22 For analyses of this problem in the theory of society see Winch [1958]; Berger,
Luckmann [1966]; Habermas [1974]; Eisenstadt [1993]; in the theory of national identity,
Smith [1986]. On these aspects twentieth-century social sciences and philosophy have often
argued convincingly, with concepts such as “social fact” (Émile Durkheim),
“institutionalization” (Max Weber); “form” (Georg Simmel); “self-fulfilling prophecy”
(William Thomas), “language games” (Ludwig Wittgenstein), “objectivation” (Arnold
Gehlen); “typification” (Alfred Schütz).
23 On collective identity as the variable outcome of collective action see e.g. Calhoun
[1991].
17
problem of change. Success in combining the problem of
maintenance with that of change in a collective identity is decisive
for the conception of collective identity of interest here. As in the
case of the individual identity, Habermas maintains, we can define
an identity as “collective” (and we can consequently affirm that its
formation process has succeeded) if it is able to solve the
problems linked to maintenance amid radical changes that involve
its structure and its context. In sum, a “successful” collective
identity is one that enables a society (a “human group”) to remain
itself despite change. As a “social construct” and because it
“maintains itself amid change”, the collective identity is
understood by Habermas as resulting from communicative and
reflexive (and self-reflexive) processes of “critical learning”: in
contemporary society identity is possible only in a “reflexive
form” founded on the awareness of having “equal and general
chances” to take part in communication processes; in these
communication processes the identity’s formation takes place as a
continuous “learning process” [see Habermas 1974]. According to
Habermas, in particular, the reflexive and communicative process
is constituted by a texture of social relations that are normatively
structured and dialogically oriented, and these relations give rise to
what he calls “rational identity”.
Finally, this collective identity, produced and maintained
reflexively and communicatively, has evidently no need to rely on
“fixed contents”. And yet, as Habermas himself admits, it cannot
rest on nothing. In fact “it needs to get contents”, these being the
materials on which the reflexive and communicative processes
draw when they generate a collective identity [see Habermas 1974;
2005] (also with selective modalities, I would add) 24.
This conception of collective identity, though is not free of
ambiguity or weakness, it is fruitful in many respects; in particular
because it combines, in its own way, two models often treated as
alternative or opposing patterns of collective identity formation:
identities seen as socially constructed artefacts and identities seen
24 An important part in this process is played by the mechanisms of the (collective)
memory and a collectivity’s relationship with its history, including the so-called “politics of
history”. See Ricoeur [2000]; Assmann [1992]; Zerubavel [2003]; as well as the classic
studies by Halbwachs [1925; 1950].
18
as precipitated by the sharing of experiences and memories 25. But
in a certain respect that is of importance to us here, Habermas’s
conception seems to be problematic and fragile: particularly in its
definition of the logic that underlies the formation, maintenance
and change of the collective identity of a society or human group.
Habermas, in fact, conceives such processes and their logic of
action as relational networks that are merely communicative and
dialogical-consensual. He considers the formation, maintenance
and change of collective identity processes to be based on some
“authenticity” principle or logic whereby a genuine collective will
expresses itself. In the end, he maintains, this collective will
coincides with the image of “civil society” and with the idea of
“deliberative democracy” supposedly extraneous to, or protected
against, the logics (and institutions) of power and manipulation 26.
The objections that can be raised against this conception are
that, on the one hand, power and manipulation are themselves
“communicative”; and, on the other, that relational networks and
social communication processes are intimately constituted also by
strategic factors and conflict dynamics: that is, by logics of power
and manipulation 27. In others words, logics of power and
manipulation are two physiological elements of communication.
Consequently, the processes that generate collective identity
cannot be extraneous to power and manipulation. Arguing that
collective identities are socially built by communicative and reflexive
means should not induce us forget that manipulation, violence
and instrumentality are generally and “physiologically” present
within social relation systems, and within everyday
communication both private and public. Specifically, these
elements are intrinsic to the processes whereby a collective
identity is formed, maintained and changed. This entails
recognition of the political nature of the mechanisms that culturally
This distinction is taken from Smith [1995].
The most updated and mature version of this Habermasian conception, which seeks
to remedy the shortcomings of the previous one, is in Habermas [1992]. Of course, the
weaknesses in Habermas’s theory that I have summarized here are most apparent when his
“discourse” moves from the ethical-normative philosophical level to the sociopoliticalempirical one. For a critical analysis of the ideal vision of civil society see Nevola [2003b].
27 See Rusconi [1984]; Nevola [1994b]. On the logic of political manipulation see Riker
[1986] and, with closer reference to the symbolic dimension, Edelman [1976]; Kertzer
[1988].
25
26
19
structure collective identities 28. The reference to power, in
particular, besides being unavoidable when discussing the
formation, maintenance and change of a collective identity, makes
it possible to grasp basic aspects of the distinction between cultural
and political identity. I shall return to this point later. For the time
being, I shall continue with discussion of the general concept of
collective identity.
A collective identity concerns how we define ourselves: “who
we are” and “who we are not”. The definition of “us” always
implies reference to (and comparison with) “others” 29. The
identity principle is indivisible from the otherness principle: there
is an “us” because there is a “them” or a “you”. Human beings
organize their lives on the basis of groupings (in the plural)
defined by highly diverse features (religion, habits, rules, territory,
descendance, language, etc.). Historically one “single large human
group” has never existed, and it is very unlikely that one will exist
in the future 30. The collective identity of a group entails the
existence of a “plurality of groups”, or better recognition of
“diversity” and the consequent recognition of the differences
among groups (any nature or value could be attributed to this
diversity). It does not mean that, in principle, it is impossible to
talk about “human identity”, referring, for example, to the
“human condition”, “human rights”, “universal values”, “equality
among humans”, or to Kant’s “cosmopolitanism”. The relevant
point is that such notions are insufficient to understand and
explain how the collective and political life of humans – including
its ideal-normative dimension – is really organized and how it
works 31.
The fact that a collective identity constitutes itself by contrast
and difference vis-à-vis an Other signifies that a group has an
For a discussion of these aspects see Nevola [1990; 1998].
Although formulated in a different context and in terms of a radical opposition, Carl
Schmitt’s (primarly existential more than political) us/them dichotomy is still an important
contribution on the theme. See Schmitt [1927]; see also Freund [1995]; Mouffe [2005].
Ackerman [2004] has recently returned to the “existential” dimension of politics.
30 Lemberg [1964] has rightly emphasised this aspect.
31 I would add that the tension between tendencies to the “particularism” and
tendencies to the “universalism” of identities is inscribed in history and human culture. It is
an essential feature of European and Western modernity – as Berlin [1990] showed with
the image of the dialectic between Enlightenment and Romanticism. More in general see
also Walzer [1991]; Todorov [1989]; Taguieff [1987]; Sternhell [2006]; Jullien [2008].
28
29
20
“inside-oriented identity” and an “outside-oriented otherness”.
This aspect of identity should not be misunderstood or trivialized.
Firstly, it does not imply that a particular group is totally
homogenized or integrally characterized by “absolute affinity”, or
characterized only by identity-homogeneity: differences and the
consequent plurality are not excluded; they are instead typically
present within groups. Secondly, and analogously, such an
argument does not imply that a particular group is characterized
by absolute extraneousness towards other groups, or characterized
only by diversity-heterogeneity: shared features and inter-group
communication are not excluded; indeed, they are typically
present 32. In other words, groups define their collective identities
on the basis of internal identity elements as well as differences
from external others; but a group’s identity is usually defined also
by internal variety and pluralism and by openness to the outside.
My argument therefore rests on the concepts of intra-group “relative
affinity” and inter-group “relative otherness”. The former refers to the
element that prevails within the group; the latter to the element
that prevails towards the outside of the group: intra-group affinity
is perceived (by the subjects involved or by an external observer) as
stronger than inter-group affinity; inter-group otherness is perceived
as stronger than the intra-group one. The affinity and
extraneousness factors may also vary in their nature and contents
as may also vary in the extent of the groups 33.
The identitary system of affinity-extraneousness is clearly intersubjective; but it can be seen, both by actors and observers, under
an “objectivistic” light (as a “social fact”, à la Durkheim) and/or
under a “subjective” light (as a subjective intention that gives
sense to social action, à la Weber). The affinity-extraneousness
identitary system entails “self-identification” 34 as “hetero32 See e.g. Lévi-Strauss [1977]. For a classic sociological analysis of the social relation
of “otherness” see Znaniecki [1930-31]. Useful political analyses are Horowitz [1985];
Kellas [1991]; Linz [1995].
33 National identity is a paradigmatic case exemplifying the dimensions (economic,
cultural, political, historical, etc.) around which a collective identity forms. The point has
been treated widely in the sociological and political science literature on the topic since the
classic theories of Ernst Renan and Max Weber.
34 As M. Rainer Lepsius has written, “The premise for the development of an identity
is the existence of an object that regards itself as a unit, distinct from others, and which
self-defines itself on this basis”. [Lepsius 1997, 3]. However, Lepsius fails to emphasise the
crucial factor of hetero-identification.
21
identification”. In regard to self-identification, the (relative) affinity
of a group means that its members a) have something in common;
b) are aware that they have something in common; c) are aware
that one of the things that they have in common is membership
of the group (belief and sense of belonging and reciprocal
recognition). Likewise in regard to hetero-identification, the
(relative) affinity of a group means that its members are recognized
by other groups’ members as a) having something in common; b)
being aware of having something in common; c) being aware that
one of the things that they have in common is belonging to the
group. On both the self-identification and hetero-identification
levels, it is the third aspect (the belief and sense of belonging) that
predominates in the definition of a group and its collective
identity 35. No less important is that none of the three above
aspects should be considered a fixed starting-point for, or a
“natural” feature of, the collective identity. Instead, they all
represent stakes and possible landings in the (relational,
communicative and reflexive) processes by which identities are
formed, and in the (political) struggle for identitary recognition 36.
Redefined thus, collective identities “exist” even in
contemporary developed society – although they are often
characterized as dynamic, fluid, context-bound, relational,
negotiated, contested, and reflexive, constantly built and re-built,
and with problematic borders [see Shore 1993]. They are “belief
objects”, “networks of symbolic acts” [see Taguieff 1995a].
35 However, more generally, in the theoretical scheme of political unification, the
dimensions of “identity/membership” and “power/command” are of equal importance for
political unification: see Nevola [2007a]. A different position is taken, for instance, by
Michael Walzer, who tends to give priority to the former: “The primary good that we
distribute to one another is membership in some human community. And what we do with
regard to membership structures all our other distributive choices: it determines with
whom we will make those choices, from whom we require obedience and collect taxes, to
whom we allocate goods and services”. Again: “Admission and exclusion are the core of
communal independence. They suggest the deepest meaning of self-determination.
Without them, there could not be communities of character, historical stable, ongoing
associations of men and women with some special commitment to one other and some
special sense of their common life” [Walzer 1983, 41 and 70]. Here I merely point out that
the structuring of a political identity also entails a structuring of intra-group and inter-group
power.
36 On the “struggle for recognition” see Taylor [1992]; Honneth [1992]; Habermas
[1993]; Ricour [2000]. See also Pizzorno [1977]; Rusconi [1984]; Nevola [1990].
22
3. The numerous faces of collective identity
The above-suggested concept of collective identity should be
specified. Collective identity comes in many guises; that is, it has
many faces. Some of them should be clarified, albeit with no claim
to systematicity or exhaustiveness: for the aim here is instead to
focus selectively on the analytical tools needed to interpret the
social phenomena of interest: national and regional identity.
A) A collective identity is cultural (or ethno-cultural) when a
group’s self- and hetero-identification is based on a series of
elements which we normally recognize as cultural: language,
literary and artistic tradition, habits, rules of social behaviour,
religion, historical memory, various beliefs, myths, rites, symbols,
etc.
B) In some cases these identitary elements are shared by a
group within a delimited territory. Owing to its material, historical
and symbolic features, this territory become another factor giving
shape and content to the collective identity. Space becomes the
object of collective learning, appropriation and feeling. It becomes
a place dense with historical and symbolic meanings; a space that
hosts and nourishes the identitary roots of a group and gives
structure to a privileged “communicative field”. Space and time
(and culture) meet and merge within this face of collective identity
consisting in territorial identity.
C) Finally, a collective identity acquires its guise as political
identity when the following conditions are satisfied: i) the
elements that give shape and content to a cultural type of
collective identity (“territorialized” or otherwise) are sustained by
power structures and instruments shared by a group; ii) this group
must recognize itself, and be recognized, as having an explicit and
shared “command chain” that imposes decisions, choices, and
sanctions that are authoritative and binding erga omnes within the
group; iii) the group must decide not to tolerate interference (from
outside by other groups) in its self-organization of collective
public life, except interferences which a group allows. This means
that political identity centres on “force” and produces the
“compulsory” attitudes and behaviours (“political obligations”)
[see Tussman 1960; Pitkin 1965-1966; Walzer 1970; Flatman 1972;
Pateman 1979; Beran 1987] which the group’s members recognize
23
as “legitimate duties” towards the community to which they
belong. These are loyalty attitudes and behaviours 37 whose
purpose is to defend the group’s integrity, well-being and survival
when it is subject to threats or problems arising from within or
without.
Every collective identity is necessarily a cultural identity; but it
is not necessarily a territorial or political one. Hence a territorial
kind of identity has a cultural face but not always a political one;
likewise, a political kind of identity always has a cultural face but
not always a territorial one. We may accordingly construct a
simple typology of collective identities that starts from cultural
identity and develops through the two dimensions of identitary
territoriality and politicity. Some ideal-typical forms of collective
identity emerge from this typology (see schema 1 and schema 2).
Schema 1. Tipology of collective identities
TERRITORIAL
(CULTURAL) IDENTITY
POLITICAL-TERRITORIAL
(CULTURAL) IDENTITY
PURE CULTURAL
IDENTITY
POLITICAL
(CULTURAL) IDENTITY
T
E
R
R
I
T
O
R
I
A
L
I
T
Y
POLITICITY
37
On the concept of loyalty in a political community see Grodzins [1956].
24
Schema 2. Some examples of identitary phenomena from the typology
T
E
R
R
I
T
O
R
I
A
L
I
T
Y
CULTURAL, LINGUISTIC,
TERRITORIAL
ETHNIC, ECONOMIC
(CULTURAL)
IDENTITY
AREAS
POLIS, MEDIEVAL CITIES,
REPUBLICS,
PRINCEDOMS, NATIONSTATES, EMPIRES?
EUROPEAN UNION?
REGIONS?
CULTURAL
ASSOCIATIONS,
CULTURAL OR SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS, HABITS,
LIFE-STYLES,
LINGUISTIC, ETHNIC OR
RELIGIOUS GROUPS
POLITICAL PARTIES,
POLITICAL MOVEMENTS
POLITICITY
The existence of this variety of identitary forms and the fact
that they do not exclude each other (so that the members of a
group and the group itself may have many types of identity) raises
the question of whether a “multiple identity” is possible, and also
of whether the different types of identity all have the same weight.
In recent years the notion of a multiple identity has gained much
importance in social science debates, and it has been often cited to
relativize the value of the Nation-State as an identitary model on a
descriptive, explanatory or prescriptive level. I cannot discuss the
question in its entirety here, but some considerations about the
shortcomings of the multiple identity perspective are necessary.
First consideration. It should be borne in mind that the notion
of multiple identity refers properly to the social identity of single
individuals, not to the collective identity of a group considered as
a whole. In this regard, the supporters of the multiple identity
25
thesis often undervalue the difference, in nature and implications,
between the individual dimension of identity (the identity of an
individual, included her/his social aspects) and the collective
dimension of identity (the identity of a group), reaching
conclusions (mostly in an implicit way) about the latter by taking
characteristics of the former. They thus produce a conceptual
short-circuit that leads, in the best scenario, to a view of
“collectiveness” as the “sum of single individualities”. The
principal corpus of sociological tradition and fundamental trends in
political theory oppose this conceptual drift (which has a
liberalistic, individualistic or postmodernist matrix) with solid
arguments both theoretical and empirical [see e. g. Bellah et al.
1985]. Let us now focus on the concept of multiple identity.
According to Anthony Smith, the fundamental reason why an
individual is the pertinent referent for the multiple identity is that
“individual identity” can often be multiple because it is often
“situational”: “human beings have multiple identities – of family,
gender, class, religion, ethnic and nation – with one or other at
different time taking precedence over others, depending on many
circumstances”. Collective identity is a “pervasive” type of identity
because at a collective level “is not the options and feelings of
individuals that matter, but the nature of the collective bonds”
[Smith 1995, 123 and 124; see also Habeas 1996]. The
“pervasiveness” of collective identity depends on the nature of the
common bond. The nature of this bond can be described by
reformulating a classic idea: the collective identity of a group is
not the sum of its members identities. In accordance with
Durkheim’s sociological theory, Smith views collective identity as
a “social fact”: collective identity becomes “objective”,
enveloping, external and “coercive” for the individual, and this is
the result of a socialization and communication process [see also
Berger, Luckmann 1966].
This Smith’s argument helps in underlying, on the one hand,
the difference between individual and collective identity; and on
the other, the fact that the consistency and characteristics of a
collective identity cannot be deduced from the pure sum of a
multitude of individual actors (as we would deduce from an
ingenuous use and interpretation of public opinion surveys). It is
within this scheme that Smith modulates and specifies the nature
26
of the common collective identitary bond. But there is another
point to emphasise concerning the multiple identity; and dealing
with it can usefully draw on further passages of Smith’s analysis.
Second consideration. To be emphasised is that the argument
for a multiple identity proves very weak precisely in circumstances
where the identitary question is decisive: for example, when the
different spheres of wide-range or territorial identity (regional,
national or European) are in tension with each other, or when
collective loyalty is demanded (as usually happens in critical
situations like economic crises, a lack of resources, migratory
waves, or wars). In situations like these, a problem in the
“management of multiple identities” arises, not just at an
individual level but at a collective one as well. This observation
suffices to show that the multiple identity concept should not
become an easy rhetorical device with which to hide the
distinctive and exigent nature of a political type of collective
identity (like the one typically associated with the Nation-State).
This last consideration highlights another problematic aspect
which the multiple identity thesis undervalues: if every individual
is able to cumulate a multiplicity of identities, what are the
relations among these different identities? Do multiple identities
have the same capacity to “envelop” and “involve” the
individuals? What factors play a role in this context? Smith, for
example, poses the question as follows: “Theoretically ... it would
be perfectly possible for the people of Europe to feel that they
had more than one collective cultural identity: to feel themselves
Sicilian, Italian and European or Flemish, Belgian and European
(as well as being female, middle class, Muslim or whatever). At the
same time, it should also be asked: what is the relative strength of
these ‘concentric circles of allegiance’? Which of these circles is
politically decisive, which has most effect on people’s day-to-day
lives? And which of these cultural identities and loyalties is likely
to be more durable and pervasive?” [Smith 1995, 124]. Smith gives
clear answers to these questions: as in the past so today, the
national collective identity still predominates [see e. g. also Thiesse
1999; Haller 2003]. Smith is likewise unequivocal in identifying the
factor that, even in the case of multiple identities, makes the
national identity prevail: it is, once again, culture. More precisely,
the deep-lying and “mythical” dimension of a culture that works
27
as a mythomoteur, that symbolically transforms collective
experiences into common values for a people (and thus forms its
collective identity) [see Smith 1986].
Smith’s proposed solution for the problems concerning the
multiple identity thesis is convincing as regards the supremacy of
national identity among other extensive and territorial identities,
but not as regards explanation of the prominence of culture. In
this regard, I merely point out that this analysis is incomplete
because it is oriented only to the cultural collective identity and
neglects the importance of a political collective identity. But the
political dimension of collective identity is essential when
discussing the problem of multiple identities and their weight in
public life. Indeed, when we more generally consider the historical
formation processes (maintenance and change) of collective
identities, the dimensions of identity politics, political culture and
political socialization are extremely important 38. The prominence of
the political dimension of a collective identity is linked to the
political bonds (loyalty and obligation) that define self- and
hetero-recognition by a group as political collectiveness in the sense
defined earlier.
I have elsewhere sought to delineate a theory of political
unification [see Nevola 2007a]. This theory highlights that a
collective identity needs “force” if it is to be a resource for the
“political unification” of a community; in other words it must be
backed by power structures and instruments that bind belonging
and translate identity into loyalty. Only under these conditions can
a potential political (authoritative) system pass the “political
unification test”. In other words, the test verifies in this case the
availability of a political identity and determines the collective
loyalty (both “vertical” and “horizontal”) that consists in the
ability to set the “common bond” as binding (political obligation).
My argument concerning national/regional identity is that is only
under these conditions, and at this level, that the political38 Reference to the identitary model of the Nation-State is illuminating in this regard;
not so much in its specificity as a historical phenomenon and a particular form of political
unity, but rather insofar as it helps give salience to the general and typical conditions that
have produced a variety of empirical cases and a successful historical model. For a
preliminary discussion see Nevola [2001a; 2007c].On the concept of political identity see e.
g. Mac Kenzie [1978].
28
identitary primacy of the Nation-State has historically manifested
itself and continues to do so today. This kind of political unity,
which was built in Europe by structuring/delimiting the political
space over many waves between the sixteenth and nineteenth
centuries 39, represents better than any other identitary system the
bonds and meanings of political obligation. This kind of political
unification had success also in facing the regional identitary
challenges and claims.
At this point it is possible to suggest a summary definition of
territorial-political (and necessarily also cultural) identity that
combines the elements mentioned above. A collective identity is
political and it expresses group loyalty (political obligation) because
it is based on individuals’ sense of belonging to the same group, a
belonging characterized by:
1. an awareness of reciprocal recognition among group members
and towards the group (as self-recognition and heterorecognition);
2. a sharing of public-life aspects (history and memory, habits,
rules and values, symbols and rites, social life practices);
3. the availability of common resources (public goods, both
material and symbolic);
4. a sense of solidarity both reciprocal and towards the group that
makes the distribution of citizenship benefits and costs
acceptable to the group;
5. a common legitimation of the command chain, its contents, its
institutions and procedures;
6. borders and criteria of inclusion in/exclusion from citizenship
that delimit the group with respect to others;
7. a shared territory (physically, legally and symbolically defined);
8. a possibility for the group to reproduce itself and to persist
over time and generations notwithstanding changes that may
affect the group.
The case of national identity fits perfectly with this definition
of political-territorial identity. But this definition also marks a
39 From the large body of historiographical, political, sociological and anthropological
literature on the topic see e. g. Hintze [1962; 1964]; Rotelli, Schiera [1972-1974]; Maravall
[1972]; Eisenstadt, Rokkan [1973]; Rokkan [1999]; Tilly [1975b]; Schultze [1994]; Hermet
[1996]; Reinhard [1999]; Krasner [1999].
29
“qualitative” difference between national and regional identity.
This difference can be shown by identifying and clarifying what
lies hidden beneath these two types of collective identity (national
and regional).
4. Politics, territory, identity: the paradigmatic case of Nation-State
The concept of national identity concerns the self- and heterorecognition of a group as a Nation. Here “Nation” is used in a
general sense to denote a human group, self-organized and selfgoverned, that shares a political identity within a particular
territory’s borders and maintains this identity and belonging over
time (transmitting them from one generation to the next).
According to this definition, “Nation” is a political concept that
refers to the historical experience of the Nation-State; further, the
Nation is the reference for movements that aim to make national
identity and State coincide: that is, the coincidence of the sense of
belonging with the legal, administrative, and coercive institutions
of collective life organization.
Usually, specialized studies emphasise that State and Nation
should be kept distinct at both the analytical and empirical levels.
There are good reasons for doing so, but this distinction is more
questionable than appears at first sight. I say here only that in this
context I prefer the notion of “Nation-State” to refer to the
typical (but not the only) result of complex historical processes of
formation of the (modern) State and Nation.
When we use the term “Nation-State”, we refer to a pervasive,
deep-lying, and enduring experience and mental category that
have defined the world in which we live – even though they are
not the whole of it. I shall summarize some salient aspects:
a. the Nation-State is the most important and documented
example of “political unity”; not by chance it has become the
main field of studies on political development and political
modernization [see e. g. Almond, Verba 1963; Organski 1965;
Almond, Powell 1966; Pye 1966; Rustow 1967; Almond 1990;
Rokkan 1999], a key element in historiographical, sociological,
30
and political narratives 40, and the empirical referent (often
implicit) for the concept of society 41;
b. the Nation-State is a historical phenomenon characteristic of
the European political world and it extends beyond its original
areas: it is an important factor in Weber’s “European
uniqueness” of rationalization (in political-territorial
organization spheres and with its economic, social, and cultural
implications) 42, that is to say, an essential component of the
“European trajectory towards modernity” [see Therborn
1995];
c. the Nation-State was the protagonist of, or at least the
principal context for, the achievement of modern democracy
and its citizenship system [see Marshall 1950; Bendix 1964;
1978; Dahl 1971; 1990; Turner, Hamilton 1994; Linz, Stepan
1996; Nevola 2007c].
But does the Nation-State still represent all this? Does it
maintain its centrality in collective life? Or does it have, like any
other historical phenomenon, a “life cycle” (birth, development,
decline, death)?
In the past twenty years, in concomitance with globalization
and political events linked to 1989, the Nation-State is deemed to
be in a crisis, or even dead, by public opinion and academic
studies 43. On this view, the Nation-State can no longer perform
the functions that made it successful because it is challenged or
eroded by globalization, the market economy and European
integration, by regionalist tendencies or by local powers 44. This is
40 I refer here to the large body of studies that reconstruct history using conceptual
schemes centred on the Nation-State and to the political-science and sociological studies
devoted to the most diverse aspects of social and political life (democracy, parties, the
welfare State, the class structure, religious beliefs, and so on).
41 This argument has been put forward, for example, by Giddens [1990]. The same line
of inquiry has been pursued by political studies. See e.g. Freddi [1989]; Linz, Stepan [1996];
Fukuyama [2004]. That the Nation-State occupies a central position in political studies has
also been confirmed in anthropology, although often in critical terms: See e.g. Geertz
[1999].
42 See Weber 1922; see also, almost a century later, Mendras [1997].
43 See e.g. McGrew [1992]; Guehénno [1993]; Omahe [1995]; Varoius Authors [1995];
Strange [1996]; Brubaker [1996]; Badie [1995; 1999]; Galli [2001]; Cassese [2002]; Cooper
[2003]; Hobsbawm [2007]. For a different point of view see e. g. Dunn [1995]; Smith,
Solinger, Topik [1999].
44 From this perspective it is typically asserted that the Nation-State has been
31
supposed to be happening within the same Europe where the
Nation-State was born and will finally die. From this derives the
conviction concerning the fragility or increasing irrelevance of the
national identity, and that it is not a resource but rather an
obstacle against social development and the government and
governance of collective life.
This conclusion concerning the crisis or death of the NationState is not new. Over the centuries various analysts and observers
have argued that the Nation-State was in a crisis. And they were
always wrong. And it seems to be the same today 45. The thesis of
the irreversible crisis, if not the demise, of the Nation-State seems
to rest on fragile bases.
National identity is still the primary form of political-territorial
identity: this is demonstrated by the phenomenon of “national
awakening” in the Western world and by the public debates that
accompany it in the European countries and the USA (but also
outside the Western area); and it is also shown by the paralysis, if
not the regression, of European political integration and the
failure of other projects for the supra-national federal unification
of macro-areas 46. In the “post-1989” world (and since 11
September 2001), the return of a national form of collective
identity/belonging, and its persistence despite prognoses of a
post-national epoch, are undeniable on the factual level, beyond
any judgement about its value 47. The essential reasons as to why
discredited by the two world wars of the first half of the twentieth century; that it dissolved
during “les trentes glorieuses” of the second postwar period; and became an anachronistic
and ineffective political space in comparison to social, economic and cultural realities: “too
small to serve as an effective unit of coordination in an increasingly internationalized
world, too large and remote to be a plausible and legitimate entity of identification”
[Brubaker 1996, 2]. For a more meticulous, balanced, and multi-faceted analysis of these
tendencies see Sassen [2006; 2007; Cofrancesco 2010].
45 The active role of the Nation-State and demands for its intervention in social and
economic-financial life since 2001 and the financial crisis of recent years (demands made by
the most diverse sectors of society and the economy) should be considered by even the
most intransigent proponents of the demise of the Nation-State – also remembering that it
has never been omnipotent.
46 See on France Taguieff [1995a]; on the United States Huntington [2004]; on Italy
Rusconi [1993]; Nevola [2003d]; on Germany Maier [1988]; Lepenies [1992]; for a
comparative perspective Kellas [1991]; Smith [1995]; Grilli di Cortona [2003]; on European
integration and its political-identitarian failure see Nevola [2007a]. See also notes 47 and 50.
47 With reference to various phenomena and their analysis see: Mueller-Funk [1992];
Offe [1993]; Breton, Galeotti, Salmon, Wintrobe [1995]; Kupchan [1995]; Rupnik [1995];
Birbaum [1997]; Brabaker [1996]; Haupt, Mueller, Woolf [1998]; Cordellier, Poisson [1995];
32
the Nation is still a protagonist have been summarized, among
others, by Pierre-Andrè Taguieff 48, who advances considerations
which current political analyses usually overlook. Even if the
crudity of Taguieff’s observations may be uncomfortable for a
certain rhetoric of “political correctness”, it would be ingenuous
or wrong on both political and analytical grounds to disregard
them. Taguieff writes: Une identité collective existe à la condition
de faire l’objet d’une croyance, de costituer la reference des gestes
symbolique. Porquoi donc la collection d’humains s’identifiant
comme “francais” manifeste-t-elle un “besoin” d’identification, en
dépit des cours de boudoir des noveaux réformateurs de l’esprit
public, s’efforcant de persuader celui-ci que désormais les cadres
de l’Etat-nation sont devenus “trop étroits” pour résoudre
efficacement les grands problems des societies post-industrielles,
que les Etats sont condamnés à l’impuissance bavarde en raison
des interdependences planétaires, et que c’est là un signe émis par
le sens de l’Histoire? Et si l’identité francais, bien que notion
indistinct, est une idée incarnée, incorporée, intériorisée, peut-il en
aller de meme pour une identité supranationale telle que celle de
l’Europe? Et les individus humains peuvent-ils se satisfaire
d’appartenir sans médiation au genre humain? Car l’espéce
humaine ne saurait constituer une communauté (politique ou
culturelle), elle n’est qu’un concept classificatoire, et d’ordre
zoologique. Une communauté, structure existentielle d’appartenance, n’est ni une espéece (zoologiquement determine), ni un
genre (moralment define). Bref, l’identité planétaire d’un individu
humain demeure une fiction, expression pure d’un désir de type
“océanique” (la fusion dans le Grand Tout). Rien ne doit bien sur
interdire à nos contemporains de rever, et, par example, de
s’enthousiarmer devant l’émergence d’une nouvelle utopia, celle
de l’existence post-nationale des humains pacifique et
départicularisés de l’avenir… Mais le doux reve du post-national
parait n’Etre qu’une fragile compensation-écran, voilant la réalité
Scharpf [1997]; Smith [1995]. See also notes 46 and 50.
48 I would point out that Pierre-Andrè Taguieff, a careful scholar of racism, is a wellknown and declared anti-nationalist and anti-racist. See Taguieff [1987; 1995b]. He refers
to the issue of French national identity, but it is entirely evident that his questions and
intellectual provocations apply to the question of national identity in general.
33
hypernationaliste du monde qui semble advenir” 49.
In Taguieff’s argument we find a well-expressed position of
political realism, as well as all the perplexity provoked by the
thesis of the advent of the “post-national epoch”. But besides the
anthropological-political element that Taguieff underlines, and
beyond the return of the Nation and of patriotism, there are more
specific tensions pushing for change that are present even within
the most consolidated democratic societies, especially since the
fall of Communism 50. National belonging and identity are today
the principal points of coalescence of such tensions, and at the
same time they are delicate ideological resources (that is, politicalcultural mechanisms of “meaning” production) with which to
subdue those tensions – resources that can be used politically for
different purposes (from aggressive nationalism to constitutional
patriotism).
On considering the Nation as one (obviously not the only)
source of identity and a sense of belonging to which communities
still refer, it is easy to understand why the national question has
returned to the agenda from its state of latency and repression,
especially when a political community must deal with problematic
change processes and challenges which threaten its cohesion and
(social, economic, religious, cultural, territorial, political) balances,
if not its very existence. The reference, of course, is to the
situation of many Western democracies after the Cold War.
Now briefly discussed are some of the principal changes and
crisis factors that have entered the international stage since 1989
(and impacted on collective life in the Nation-States). Why and
how the phenomena described below fuel the return of the
Nation are easily understandable for the reader, although each of
these phenomena should require more details 51:
49 Taguieff [1995a, 131-32]. See also Lemberg [1964]; Smith [1995]; Nevola [2002]. Of
course, also the “post-national” utopia is not an entirely new notion. Nor does it imply that
anything utopian is by definition of little value or uninfluential in social life. The concept of
“community” used here by Taguieff relates to the one formulated by Weber [1922].
50 Significant studies on the problem of national identity in other European countries
are, for example: Habermas [1990]; Birbaum [1992]; Greenfeld [1993]; Brubaker [1992];
two extensive thematic sections in Les Temps Modernes [608, 2000] and in Political Quarterly [1,
2000] respectively devoted to the French and British cases. See also the references at notes
46 and 47.
51 The references that follow, with no claim to completeness, indicate analyses that
help clarify phenomena and issues that stand in the background to my discussion but can
34
a. The fall of the Soviet Union and of its imperial structure, and
the contemporary demise of communist doctrine, brought to
the forefront nationalisms and micro-nationalisms that had
been silent or invisible, first in central-eastern Europe, and
then elsewhere. Similar phenomena have been due to the
break-up of Yugoslavia, where very aggressive nationalisms
have emerged. In this broad international context there came
about the sudden re-unification of Germany, which implied,
among other things, an acceleration of critical reflection on
German identity and a push towards a renewed national selfconsciousness [see e.g. Various Authors 1991; Nahayho,
Swoboda 1990; Garton Ash 1992; Cviic 1993; Waldenberg
1994; Rupnik 1995; Brubaker 1996; see also notes 47 and 50];
b. The economic-financial and communication globalization
processes, with the freedom of capital movements, the dematerialization of wealth and its tendency to escape the fiscal
regimes of individual states, has put the bonds of national
belonging under strain, starting with the fragile mechanisms of
collective solidarity represented by the welfare of a political
community. But there is also the opposite trend represented by
forms of “particularism”, a search for local roots and genuine
specificities. Between the two extremes of globalism and
localism the Nation-State is once again called into question:
either because it is clamped in the vice of “glocalism” or
because it is re-valued as a point of political-democratic
balance between macro- and micro-belongings [see e. g.
Guhénno 1993; Held 1995; Omahe 1995; Smith 1995; Clark
1997; Geertz 1999; Beck 1997; 2002; Bauman 2000; 2001;
Baldassarre 2002; Sassen 2006; 2007];
c. The process of European integration, and its limits, strongly
recalls the traditional role and physiognomy of the NationState, as well as the consistency of the sense of national
identity/belonging of citizens with respect to the European
sense. Besides the difficulties that European integration has
encountered in the post-Maastricht period, there is an evident
resurgence of political will in defence of “part positions”,
national in this case; or the persistent strength of national
only be alluded to here.
35
belonging/identity with respect to the European one. Finally
apparent is a revaluation of the Nation-State as a politicalinstitutional space of democracy due to the “democratic
deficit” of the European Union [see e. g. Habermas 1991;
Haller, Richter 1994; Grimm 1994; Rusconi 1996; Dahrendorf
1997; Banchoff, Smith 1999; Schmitter 2000; Nevola 2001a;
2001b; 2007a];
d. The immobilism into which the European integration process
lapsed after Maastricht and following introduction of the euro,
on the one hand, and political-military conflicts and
international terrorism on the other, came after the end of the
bi-polarized world. It revealed the irreducibility of the logic of
“national security and interest” and forced individual NationState s to establish urgently and clearly their national political
interests and their geopolitical roles. In this frame, the war
scenarios revived the issues of patriotism and national political
loyalty [see e. g. Huntington 1996; Portinaro 1996; Clark 1997;
Panebianco 1997];
e. Migrations (intra-European and extra-European), with their
disruptive and complex effects, lead to give new attention to
the Nation-State borders (within the same European Union
common space) as well as forcefully raise the issues of intercultural relations, inter-ethnic cohabitation, multiculturalism,
communitarianism, and the meaning of national
belonging/identity [see e. g. Various Authors 1990; Taylor
1992; Bonazzi, Dunne 1994; Crespi, Segatori 1996; Kymlicka
1995; Sartori 2000; Kimlicka, Opalski 2001; Banting, Kimlicka
2006; Todorov 2008; Moisi 2009].
The Nation is a source (clearly not the only one) of a sense of
belonging and identity on which political communities draw. It is
therefore evident why the national question arises especially
during critical periods for a political community (when, for
example, it has to deal with changes and challenges that may affect
its balance or its existence itself). This is the situation in which the
majority of Western democracies today find themselves.
Notwithstanding these manifestations of national-identitary
“revival”, however, many analysts argue that the existence of a
“national revival” does not signify that Nations exist; and they
36
counsel against reifying the “Nation” [see e. g. Brubaker 1996]. To
be sure, national identity is a “construct”. The Nation-State is a
historical product, and the Nation is “imagined”; but this is the
case of all identities, as well as all the phenomena of our lives. But
others are the points that we should be stress:
1. once identities “exist”, they produce consequences: they shape
attitudes and behaviours, they become “realities”;
2. the “reality” of identities depends on the modalities and
success of their formation processes, and on certain
conditions. What about these last conditions?
Political science and historical-sociological studies on the
political development and Nation-States building have shown the
multiple factors that underlie the formation of political-territorial
collective identities: economic-industrial and financial structures,
strategies of interest groups, political and juridical institutions,
coercive mechanisms, military organizations, communicative
networks, cultural agencies, etc. They propose various
combinations of these dimensions, occurring in different phases,
during the construction of the Nation-State [see Deutsch 1953;
Etzioni 1965; Bendix 1964; Almond, Powell 1966; Pye 1966;
Lipset, Rokkan 1967; Rokkan 1968; 1969; 1971; 1975; 1981;
Rokkan, Urwin 1983; Tilly 1975b; 1990; Anderson 1983; Gellner
1983; De Swann 1988; Breully 1993; Hermet 1996; Wehler 2001].
But all of them recognize that the cultural dimension (or better,
the political-cultural one) plays a central role. As Charles Tilly
summarized [see Tilly 1975a], during the formation of the NationState almost all European governments took action to
“homogenize” their populations as regards religion, ethnic and
cultural minorities, a national language, and a public system of
mass education. Governments that did not take such action, or
failed to accomplish it, gave rise to very fragile and precarious
Nation-States, as happened typically in south-eastern Europe. In
other words, they failed with the politics of identity, and this failure
generated major problems with national identity (and
consequently for the Nation-State).
The cultural success of the political identity of the Nation-State
and its elites can be considered on various levels:
1. the cultural homogenization of social norms, behaviour
37
2.
3.
4.
5.
expectations, symbols and values, beliefs, collective and public
rites, customs and traditions [see Elias 1939; Tilly 1975a;
Rokkan 1975; Smith 1991; 2008; Hermet 1996; Thiesse 1999];
the linguistic unification based on a synthesis between
vernaculars and “court national language”: this synthesis took
the place of vulgar Latin (often metabolized as a “substrate”)
and gave origin to the different national languages (of
Romance/neo-Latin, Germanic or Celtic stock) [see Rokkan
1975; De Swann 1988; Hermet 1996; on more strictly linguistic
aspects see Auerbach 1948; 1958];
the creation of a unitarian network of communicative
infrastructures able to connect individuals and groups
previously scattered among physical and communicative
territories – the “local spaces” of the emerging Nation-State
[see Deutsch 1953; De Swann 1988];
the programs of compulsory elementary education geared to
training workers and/or citizens for the tasks required by work
(especially in industry) and/or by the political system
(especially the democratic one), whose effects were the onset
of social mobility and political participation by worker-citizens,
enlargement of the labour force and the consensus sought by
economic and political entrepreneurs [see De Swann 1988;
Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983; Hermet 1996];
the promotion of a political culture and identification with the
Nation to be realized through a “struggle for recognition” led
by a central political authority against the peripheral or local
ones (churches, princedoms, local communities, elites etc.), as
well as through multiple political culture channels (including
public rites), both for the mass and for the élite [see Rokkan
1975; Rokkan, Urwin 1983; Smith 1991; Hermet 1996; Thiesse
1999; on individual national cases see e. g. Mosse 1974;
Vovelle 1976].
The political-identitary project pursued by the élites of the
Nation-State on the way to unification, and activated through the
channels of political culture, political socialization and the
educational system, developed through various phases.
As well known, this project was never entirely peaceful
because it always had to overcome numerous opponents:
38
churches, local seigniories, peripheral elites and communities,
sometimes the working-class movement itself. But above all, the
project almost never achieved complete or absolute politicalcultural integration in regard to certain important aspects
(especially linguistic and religious). The continuing presence of
strong ethno-cultural and linguistic minorities, of local-regional
identities and loyalties, throughout most of the history of NationStates reveals the incompleteness of the integration. The historical
persistence of these phenomena shows that the central authority
of the Nation-State, and in parallel national identity/loyalty, have
been questioned or rejected – in many cases until the present
day 52.
The politics of identity and the national identity are essential
components of a society’s political culture. According to a
definition widely used in the social sciences (however
unsatisfactorily) [see Almond 1960; Almond, Verba 1963;
Almond, Powell 1966; for a critique see Caciagli 1988; Allum
1988], a political culture consists of a set of individual attitudes
predominant in a given population. A political culture is a sort of
“social machine” whose possible outcome is legitimation of the
political system to which it belongs. Political legitimation, in fact,
is also based on the fact that individuals identify with the political
community to which they feel that they belong. From this derives
the support that they provide to the political community
represented by the Nation-State, with its borders (territorial,
political, cultural, juridical and symbolic) and its authoritative
process of self-government. For these reasons, success in
formation of the Nation-State, its persistence, and its good
functioning, depend not only on the quality, efficiency and
effectiveness of its political institutions but also on the capacity of
its political culture to maintain a sense of belonging to it – that is,
a national identity [see Linz 1995; Nevola 2007c].
On the basis of these considerations we may say, summarizing,
that the concept of Nation-State refers to a human group
52 For overviews or analyses of individual cases see: Smith [1991]; Rokkan, Urwin
[1983]; Tiryakian, Rogoski [1985]; Connor [1994]; Williams, Kofman [1989]; Rex [1995];
Haupt, Mueller, Woolf [1998]; Grilli di Cortona [2003]; Caciagli [2003]; De Winter, Tuersan
[1998]; Gourevitch [1979]; Hechter [1975]; Minahan [2002]; Newman [1996]; Seiler [1994];
Smith [1981]. On the extreme case of secession see Williams [1982]; Nevola [1998].
39
organized on a territory that shares a sense of collective identity
and belonging founded on shared history, cultural heritage,
authoritative norms and interests; that reproduces and remoulds
its identity/belonging over time, transmitting it from one
generation to the next; and that is characterized by selfrecognition and hetero-recognition. In other words, a NationState is a political-cultural community marked by a collective
identity/belonging, by an authoritative system of self-government,
by loyalty and political obligation.
The Nation-State is, moreover, a “thought-out ordering”, that
is to say, a “defined representation” that identifies a collectiveness
of men with a unity [see Lepsius 1982] and as such it (and then
the national identity) can be characterised (“thought out”) with
identitary contents combined to varying extents. As it is known,
political thought and the social sciences have highlighted different
conceptions of the Nation and national identity using a variety of
constitutive characters with an “objective” nature (language,
religion, territory) or a “subjective” one (perception or awareness
of belonging to a political community). On these bases, several
classifications and typologies of national identities and “modalities
of being a Nation” have been formulated. These diverse
conceptions of the Nation can be grouped into a few principal
“families” consolidated for (at least) two centuries by political
thought and then revisited by the social sciences: the ethnic or
ethno-cultural Nation (volksnation), the cultural Nation, the civicpolitical Nation (or citizens’ Nation), the Nation as constitution
(constitutional or republican patriotism). Ultimately, identifying
the Nation (or a Nation) in one way or another depends on what
Rainer M. Lepsius called the “criteria for the determination” of
national collectiveness used in a in the conception of the Nation
[see Lepsius 1982]. These criteria are established with the
important contribution of intellectuals, élites, political movements
and common people, over long historical periods, routinely or at
particular and accelerated critical conjunctures of collective life.
These criteria, moreover, are tools and stakes for the political
identitary struggle (in particular on the side of the struggle for
political-cultural “hegemony” (to recall a concept of Antonio
Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu). Also through these processes
Nation-States and national identities tend, in the case of success,
40
to settle, to “objectivise themselves” until they become “national
facts”. The diversified family of nationalistic movements (with
their ideologies, languages, symbols, political actions) is not only
and always the architect of these “national facts”; it is also a
revealing factor of them.
5. The structuring of political space between centre and peripheries: NationState and the persistence of territorial cleavages
The historical success of the Nation-State and its identitary
configuration should not cause a misunderstanding. The historical
process of State-building and national integration has been very
difficult, painful, and almost never peaceful. In the main cases,
even within the European elective area, many attempts to build a
Nation-State have failed: after the First World War, for example,
only thirty of the thousands of “political-statual” units that had
existed in Europe during the fifteenth century still did so (e pluribus
pauci, one might say) [see Tilly 1975a; see also Spruyt 1994]. In the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were still alternative forms
and natures that a political unit could assume. Besides the modern
State (then national) that subsequently prevailed, there were
arrangements such as the political federation (more or less
coordinated by a centre); the empire (weakly controlled by a
centre); the Christian republic (kept unified by the Catholic
Church); the commercial city (especially in northern Italy and in
Germany); an extensive network of commercial units (with no
central political organization: this being the case of the Hanseatic
League); the “feudal” system (then disappearing) [see Tilly 1975a;
Grilli di Cortona 2003]. These alternatives to the Nation-State
have failed for numerous reasons: they were unable to bind and
control a territory; they were unable to centralize power, law and
administration; they were unable to create specific instruments of
governance different from any other organization; they were
unable to standardize communication and transitional instruments
(such as currency, units of measurement, language); they were
unable either to monopolize or to centralize the system of
resources extraction (taxes); they were unable either to
41
monopolize or to concentrate the coercive system (use of force,
the army); they were unable to build a single shared cultural
identity able to transform itself into loyalty or political obligation
and thereby yield legitimization. In sum, they failed the “political
unification test”, and they then surrendered to the political
organization form of the Nation-State [see Nevola 2007a].
During its enterprise of multi-dimensional structuring the
political unit, the Nation-State had to overcome the resistance of
many opponents (sometimes themselves constituted as political
unities) until it absorbed them: princedoms, free cities, a variety of
kingdoms, élites and peripheral communities. The historical
processes that operated in these genetic phases of the NationState, and in projections during later centuries, are those that
come under the heading of relations between “centre” and
“peripheries” [see Rokkan 1999; Grilli di Cortona 2003], or rather
“internal colonialism” [Hechter 1975]. Behind the patterns of the
relations between the “centre” and the “peripheries” lies the
reality of persistent cleavages within the Nation-State, as well as
the Nation-State’s efforts to remove them. These are in particular
the “territorial cleavages” (or better “political-territorial” ones). As
emphasised by Stein Rokkan, territorial cleavages raise bigger
obstacles than functional ones against construction of the NationState. Territorial cleavages may even lead to war, secession or
deportation of entire populations [see Rokkan 1975]. They must
be kept to the minimum for the successful formation and
maintenance of the Nation-State; and the peripheries need to be
kept under the control of the centre (even if this control may
differ in form and intensity) 53.
53 Various factors, in an “extraordinary historical synchronism” (between the end of
the fifteenth century and the end of the eighteenth), contributed to the success of the
“unifying centre”. In the synthesis formulated by Rokkan, “first of all the development of
the literate bureaucracies and legal institutions, largely through the cooperation of the
Church with the Dynasties of the conquest centers; second, the growth of the trade and the
emergence of new industries, developments which allowed the military-administrative
machineries to expand without destroying their resource basis; and third, the emergence of
national script and the consequent attempts to unify the peripheral territories culturally
around a standard medium of internal communication: this development was pushed one
step further at the Reformation, through the break with the cross-territorial Latin culture,
and was accelerated through the invention of printing, through the multiple reproduction
of messages without relays” [Rokkan 1975, 597]. On language see in particular also De
Swaan [1988].
42
The last phase in the formation of the Nation-State is the
“nationalization of the masses”, the inclusion of the populace in
political life and mass democratization 54. At this point, if the
process has succeeded, national identity acquires the features of a
mass political culture, and eventually a liberal-democratic one as
normally understood. In regard to this complex historical-political
process I would emphasise at least one aspect, given its
implications for the topic at hand: the possibility that such a
political identitary culture develops does not depend solely on
coercion or economic factors (even if they are essential); it
requires the presence of a “political will” supported by a certain
degree of consensus. Here, especially in the long run, the NationState formation has to acquire legitimation; alongside these
processes, a certain degree of cultural communion among people
reveals its importance 55.
However, we should not overvalue the cultural (ideological,
economic) homogenization usually achieved by a Nation-State.
The historical and empirical evidence is clear in this regard.
Moreover, we should be careful not to equivocate. Despite the
apparent homogeneity suggested by the expression, “NationState” refers properly to a complex and diversified political
construct. One of the main sources of this internal variety is the
plurality/diversity of the territories that have been unified into the
political territory of a Nation-State, and therefore the
heterogeneity of the communities settled on those different (local)
territories historically involved in the process of national political
integration 56. On these bases, the national identity itself results
54 See Dahl [1971]; Rokkan [1999]. On the non-democratic variant of mass
nationalization, and specifically on the German case, see Mosse [1974]; more in general
Mazower [1998].
55 This has been argued even by scholars who tend to privilege force as a factor in the
formation of the Nation-State, if nothing else because the presence of a culturally
homogeneous population reduced the costs of State formation: it makes more feasible to
uniform the administrative arrangements, encoures the loyalty and solidarity of the subject
population to the sovereigns, makes easier the functioning of the communication systems
[see Tilly 1975a]. The weight of this cultural dimension is also recognized by those who
have such cultural exigencies (promoted by the social elites) depend on the structure and
the interests of the industrial-capitalist economy: see Gellner [1983]; Hobsbawm [1994].
On the importance of political will, even more than of economic interests, see Hermet
[1996]. On the connection between collective identity and legitimation in democracy see e.
g. Eisenstadt [1999]; Scharpf [1997].
56 As Rokkan [1999] has stressed in regard to the history of the European geopolitical
43
from a sort of assemblage, which may or may not be successful, of
several different elements 57. A “monochromatic” Nation-State is
an ideal-type which can be used for analytical explanation and
speculation, but not for empirical description. It can even be
argued that the Nation-State often has a “plural-national” nature
[see Linz 1995]. This typical condition of the Nation-State has
important implications not only for the institutional organization
of the State [see Elazar 1987; Kellas 1991; Linz 1995; Lijphart
1999] but also for the theme of national identity considered here.
After 1989 the theory of the “end of territory” [see Badie
1995] became popular: globalization and its technicalcommunicative implications seemingly entailed a de-territorialized
world (in respect to economy, politics, culture, habits and lifestyle). But this vision is rather abstract [see Sassen 2007]. It
mistakes some tendencies widespread among some social classes
or some élites for a general pattern. De-territorializing has never
been either a rooted or a general phenomenon in “real” collective life
almost anywhere in the world. Once again it has been politics that
has given visibility to a reality on which neoliberal-postmodern
thought equivocated. In this specific case the reference is to the
entry on the political stage of various movements linked to the
territory and their growing political and electoral success, in
particular certain movements with a nationalist, micro-nationalist
or “regionalist”, ethno-regionalist orientation.
But this is not all (as we shall see later). In recent years some
analysts have talked of the “re-territorialization of politics” [see
Grilli di Cortona 2003; Sassen 2006; 2007; for Italian case see e. g.
Diamanti 1993; 1996; Huysseune 2006]. This notion, or better the
notion of “(re-)politicization” of territory introduces a change in
the view of politics dominant in the past three decades. Bearing
this in mind, a first question is whether we are witnessing a real
“return” of “sub-national territories nationalism” and of
“regional” micro-nationalism, or whether we are witnessing only
the persistence of a phenomenon over short periods in which it
disappears or is latent 58.
area, the variance of the territories unified by the Nation-States is a valuable source for the
study of politics.
57 I have elsewhere treated this topic in regard to Italy: see Nevola [2003e].
58 For the twentieth century see Mazower [1998].
44
I raise this question because during the 1960s and 1970s
analysts emphasised the awakening of sub-national or regionalnationalisms, that is, “ethnical revival” or “ethnical-nationalism”
[see Smith 1981; Kellas 1991; Connor 1994]: Scottish, Welsh, Irish
(within the United Kingdom); Corsican, Breton, Occitan (within
France); Catalan, Basque, Galician (within Spain); Flemish,
Walloon (within Belgium); South-Tyrolean (within Italy). In the
1960s these phenomena were surprising, as they are more or less
so still today. But are they really surprising? Analysis of the
formation processes of the Nation-State suggests that they are
not, and the nature of what we can call the “regional fact” suggests
likewise.
As shown by politological, sociological and historiographic
studies on transformations in the Nation-States, the different
national experiences of political unification have not completely
healed territorial cleavages (in their economic-functional, sociocultural or political-institutional aspects). In fact, the problem of a
distinct regional form of territorial “politicity” is still present [see
Caciagli 1988; 2003; Rokkan, Urwin 1982; 1983; Horowitz 1985;
Williams, Kofman 1989; Chisholm, Smith 1990; Haupt, Mueller,
Woolf 1998]. A useful analytic approach to this question is the
one based on the notion of “political culture”. This approach
views “local counter-cultures” (or regional political sub-cultures)
as variously organized forms of “resistance” against the
centralizing action of the Nation-State [see Rokkan 1999; Caciagli
1988]. This “resistance” is not just a reflection of the past. I shall
now consider the other face of the territory’s importance for
identity phenomena: the “regional face”.
6. Some observations on the regional identity question
The “regional phenomenon” has attracted renewed attention
since the 1990s [see e. g. Schiera 1993; Harvey 1994; Haupt,
Mueller, Woolf 1998; Perulli 1998; Caciagli 2003; Various Authors
2005]. Long the last twenty years it has flourished within a context
different from that of the 1960s. The course of European
integration, geopolitical disruption within Eastern Europe, the
45
globalization process (as the opening of economic markets and
the revolution in communication systems), migration waves to
European countries (but also to the United States): all these have
linked more strongly than in the past the “regional question” to
the question of the Nation-State’s crisis and increasing
“democratic unease” [see Nevola 2007b] – a “malaise” that sees
public disillusion with the typical institutions of national
representative democracies (traditional parties, parliament,
government) and the success of neo-populist or anti-party
movements [see e. g. Lasch 1995; Canovan 1999; Taggart 2000;
Mény, Surel 2000; 2002; Betz 2004; Laclau 2005; Lukacs 2005;
Taguieff 2007].
The “fait regional” (the sub-national one in which we are
interested) is manifest in three main interrelated aspects: region,
regionalization, and regionalism.
1. THE REGION. Adequate understanding of a national society,
as we know, also depends on its territorial organization 59,
whether this latter rests on economic-structural differences of
capitalism and its social formations, pluralism and linguisticliterary richness, the diversification of political culture and of
the civic-associative fabric, the variety of electoral behaviours
and tendencies in which the motley nature of democratic
politics is apparent. Like many concepts with political valence,
that of the region is difficult to define univocally. But even if
somewhat vague [see Rost, Stoelting 2005], it usually refers to
collective life spaces of intermediate size between “small-scale”
(local or micro-regional) and “large-.scale” (world regions). In
our case the concept refers to collective life contexts
characterized by a variable homogeneity (political, economic,
cultural, linguistic, climatic) embedded within a higher-level
unit, like the Nation-State, and depending on the latter in
important respects. These are contexts that often present some
political-administrative aspects (or claim them). This politicaladministrative aspect is sometimes quite weak (as in the case of
a unitary-centralistic type of Nation-State, France for example);
sometimes it is very strong (as in the case of a federal Nation59 For an analysis of the Italian case, with the focus on the numerous dimensions of
territorial variety, see Coppola [1997].
46
State, like Germany or the United States); while the majority of
cases lie between these two extremes (like Italy, Spain, the
United Kingdom). The intensity of this political-administrative
aspect may change over time because of a variety of processes
that are ultimately political. Interpreted in this way, the concept
of region has a quite broad denotation that includes the
“historical region” (usually associated with ethnic bonds), but
does not end with it. In other words, “region” can have a
political-administrative denotation or a social-cultural one
(sometimes they coincide). In the former case, a region is the
“largest political-administrative unit” within the Nation-State;
in the latter, a region coincides with “a territory that hosts a
collectivity with a distinctive identity” [Caciagli 2003, 15-16].
Yet regions are not “natural realities”; they too are, obviously,
“constructed” historically, socially, politically, and culturally.
Once again, we have a cultural and political “invention” [see
Hobsbawm, Ranger 1983], and this holds regardless of
whether or not “existing regions” are based on “authentic”
historical traditions, whether or not they are of recent
development, and whether or not they have originated from
the simply existence of an administrative boundary [see Rost,
Stoelting 2005] – although all these aspects may produce
differences among the features of existing regions. Leaving
aside epistemological discussion on the “reality status” of
historical-political phenomena, here it is once again of
importance to focus on “regions as inventions”. Put briefly,
what is relevant here is that, over time, the “invented regions”
– or at least some of them – have become “objective” and
“institutionalized” (in the sense explained by sociological
theories) 60. It has thus happened that even the most “artificial”
regions have consolidated and become institutionalized within
collective imagery, political culture, political-administrative
practice, and sometimes even the everyday life-practices of
60 See on this the seminal studies by Durkheim, Weber, Schütz or Gehlen. For a theory
on how social phenomena become “objectified”, and which also assumes the perspective
of action and the actor where reality is “socially constructed”, see Berger, Luckmann
[1966]; for a more recent resumption and reformulation of this view of social phenomena
see Berger, Luckmann [1995].
47
citizens 61. In sum, transmitted from one generation to the next
as “spaces of collective life” characterized by a certain
relational density, even some of the most artificial regions have
become “realities” – social realities, that is, political-territorial
contexts. In other words, they have become elements of
collective memory, definite containers of events and characters,
myths and stereotypes. Regions tend to produce, reproduce
and project their identities. Sometimes regions are replete with
history and politics, sometimes they are less so. Moreover, they
differ by their levels of internal integration or of external
“recognition” (or “weight”). Besides these differences, the
“existence” of a “regional identitary fabric”, consisting of
cultural elements, economic interests, powers, and inertias, is
the reason why it is so difficult to reconfigure “regional
spaces” (both at national and European level).
2. REGIONALIZATION. The notion of “regionalization”
relates to the promotion of regions and regional identities.
Usually, this is a top-down process that develops through
reforms undertaken by the Nation-State so that some
functions and competences are devolved to regional
administrations. The process also entails the increased value of
territorial criteria in the organization of interests, and in
political choices [see Smith 1985; Caciagli 2003; Rost, Stoelting
2005]. As well known, in the past twenty years Europe has
seen an increase in regionalization due to pressures applied by
local élites, the claims of regional movements, the need to
reform State governance, and incentives from the European
Union.
3. REGIONALISM. The term “regionalism” has various
meanings. Here regionalism is taken to be a political-cultural
process in which a collectivity with a sense of territorial
belonging takes action, or an élite mobilizes and organizes the
cultural, economic, and political interests of a territory [see
Brunn 1995; Caciagli 2003]. After being considered for several
centuries a regressive ideology typical of laudatores temporis actis,
which the proponents of modernization opposed, regionalism
obtained political-cultural dynamism in the 1960s and 1970s,
61
This is the case, for example, of certain Italian regions.
48
and then over the past twenty years. Regionalism seemed
initially to be the ideology of marginalized backward regions
exploited by the “centre” (“internal colonialism”), but it soon
became the badge of the richest and most developed regions
(as in the cases of Catalonia, Lombardy, Veneto or Flanders) 62.
The most visible incarnations of regionalism are political or
ideological movements, sometimes outright political parties,
predicated on territorial identity and interests, and advancing
historical-cultural, political and economic claims. In some cases
such movements openly reject the Nation-State’s authority by
claiming not only cultural and administrative recognition but
also political autonomy, federalism, or even separation (using
violent or peaceful means) [see e. g. King 1982; Burgess 1986;
Elazar 1987; Chisholm, Smith 1990; Buchanan 1991; Twining
1991; Burgess, Gagnon 1993; Tullock 1994; Miglio, Barbera
1997; Nevola 1997b; Coppieters, Huysseune 2002].
Although it may happen that radical forms of regional
identitary movements dispute the political national identity, the
latter and regional identity are not necessarily in conflict with each
other 63. This observation backed by a tendency apparent at the
political level. That is to say, when the most extreme expressions
of regionalism raise the questions of the self-determination and
self-government of regional communities, and consequently claim
recognition as “new” Nation-States, the political movements or
parties that embodied that claim almost never pass the “political
unification” test or receive democratic legitimization according to
electoral rules 64. It is no coincidence that the idea of separation
62 For a map of regionalisms or regional micronationalisms and of ethno-regionalist
movements in Europe see e.g. Luverà [1999]; Caciagli [2003]; Grilli di Cortona [2003];
Haupt, Mueller, Woolf [1998]; De Winter, Tuersan [1998]; Tronconi [2009]; Huysseune
[2011].
63 See, for example, the Italian case of the “special statute regions” in Nevola [2003e];
Woolf [2000].
64 Exceptions to this general pattern, at least since the Second World War, have been
the violent dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia and the peaceful one of
Czechoslovakia. Instead, there have been no cases of the dissolution of mass liberaldemocratic regimes, notwithstanding the tensions in Canada (the case of Quebec), in Spain
(with the Basque Country), in Belgium (with Flanders and Wallonia), in France (with
Corsica) or in Italy (first with Sicily, then with the South-Tyrol/Alto Adige, finally with
“Padania”). On the political unification test see Nevola [2007a]; on the problem of the
49
from the Nation-State hardly ever receives full support from the
majority of the “regional population” (although this is difficult to
measure). Nor is it a coincidence that secession, from the point of
view of political realism, usually seems to be more a threat with
which to obtain recognition and privileges than a real goal.
7. On the “strength” of national identity
Several studies have examined the impact of sub-national
political culture on Nation-State cohesion. Some have argued that
sub-national political cultures with an ethno-linguistic basis “used
to provoke and will probably provoke more and more centrifugal
pressures” [Caciagli 1988, 454]. Such sub-national cultures
manifest certain types of political antagonism. However, history
has shown that this antagonism has not always taken the form of
radical and violent claims. This has been due in part to the
repression, coercive integration and political-cultural socialization
skills of the Nation-State. But it has also been due to the success
of “recognition politics” between centre and peripheries. A
collective identity is formed, in part, by “recognition, unrecognition or misrecognition” by others [see Taylor 1992]; from
this derives the political importance of the “struggle for
recognition” in the formation processes of collective identities
[see note 36], including political-territorial ones. What conditions
may favor this reciprocal recognition?
Firstly, for this reciprocal recognition between region and
Nation-State to come about, it is important that there be
appropriate political institutions able to regulate a plurality of
collective identities. The regionalization of Nation-State
structures, federal systems and consociational political systems in
many cases satisfies the need for reciprocal recognition on
political-institutional bases [see e. g. Horowitz 1985; Kellas 1991;
Lijphart 1999]. These are experiences well-established in the
Western democracies, even if in some cases tensions between the
Nation-State and regional peripheries persist. Whether they are
consolidated experiences or more recent tendencies, in several
democratic legitimation of secessionist claims see Buchanan [1991]; Nevola [1998].
50
cases, political arrangements of a regional, federal or
consociational kind have been able to respond even to
“centrifugal regionalism” [see Huysseune 2011], whose radical
claims for self-government or independence sometimes hide a
political strategy pursuing more moderate aims. It seems, for
example, the case of the Lega Nord in Italy and its claims for
autonomy on independence of “Padania”.
Secondly, successful reciprocal recognition between the
Nation-State and regional areas also depends on the role of the
political elites: their behaviours and attitudes strongly influence
the quality of national integration and the recognition of national
and sub-national territorial identities [see Linz 1995].
Thirdly, political-institutional solutions and the attitudes of
political élites must be sustained by a political culture that operates
at mass level as well; a political culture able to create a feeling of
“us”, of shared belonging to a national community, a common
political identity. This political culture must in particular create a
national identity able to contain the specific identities of the
territories that form a Nation-State.
Given these institutional, élite-politics and mass political
culture conditions, some cases of centrifugal regionalism still exist:
regionalism characterized by strong historical-cultural rootedness
(often centered on language or on religion) and by radical claims
(for self-government, political independence, control over
economic and fiscal resources, identitary closure of the citizenship
system). This is perhaps the case of Belgium. What prospects of
success does this kind of regionalism have?
In Europe, the past few years have seen the emergence of a
thesis that views the “region” as a political-territorial and
economic actor able to affirm its identitary centrality vis-à-vis the
Nation-State. This has been due to the presumed surrender of the
Nation-State and to the political malaise afflicting the national
democracies. National politics have been discredited by
corruption or by their failure to respond satisfactorily to citizens’
fears (economic crisis, unemployment, crime, immigration,
cultural diversity). But this thesis of the identitary centrality of the
region in comparison to the Nation-State is not convincing. It
does not persuade when it implies that authoritative bonds
(“political obligations”) should be shifted from the Nation-State
51
to the regional space. In this case, in fact, the region should
acquire the political characteristics of a Nation-State, but the
chances of this happening are very small. This identitary-territorial
change of authoritative bonds would require demanding
conditions and political resources very difficult for the actors
seeking to achieve this goal to find.
The thesis of the region’s identitary centrality rests on a
perspective with a solid historical-political basis and, mostly, on
the contingent and changing nature of political unification forms.
But the crux of this view is that, in the current historical-political
setting (especially in democracies), the “region” (or similar “subnational” as well as transnational aggregations) seem unable to
pass the “political unification test”. Exceptions are the centrifugal
phenomena of the Eastern Europe that arose from the
communist system (examples are the former Soviet Union, former
Yugoslavia and former Czechoslovakia); but as regards Western
democratic Europe, Belgium is the only case to keep seriously
under observation.
What a “region” lacks is not a common political culture or a
cultural identity (which are sometimes even stronger than those of
the Nation-State) but a political identity: which is the translation
of the collective identity into binding loyalty (“political
obligation”). The relevance of political identity emerges mostly
when multiple identities are exposed to “belonging conflicts” 65.
The Nation-State is still the political-territorial and symbolic space
in which political premises and instruments are available to
manage public problems authoritatively 66: problems as economic
65 The perplexities in this regard concern not only the idea that the State-centric system
has been superseded (given the supposed demise of the Nation-State), but also, and
especially, the notion of a “stateless federalism” (à la Althusius). This perspective, in fact,
risks leaving a “political vacuum” created by the presumed obsolescence of the NationState. Indeed, according to Otto von Gierke [1880], sovereignty does not dissolve but is
redefined in Althusius, especially with reference to Bodin’s doctrine. Were this not so, the
“political vacuum” would swallow the functional imperatives of self-government and
political obligation – associated with which is the need for any form of political community
to possess its own criteria of “inclusion/exclusion” (definition of “who we are”) and of
“obedience/disobedience” (definition of “who commands” and “whom to obey”) –
criteria that have to do, in other words, with the definition of membership and
“recognition” of the chain of command (of its procedures, institutions, and contents).
66 “Authoritative” in the sense of being endowed with legitimate binding power erga
omnes. See Easton [1953].
52
and financial crisis; employment and social protection; allocation
of rights and duties of citizenship; political participation,
representation and democratic pluralism; collective security and
public order; management of international balances and crises. It
is probably for this reason that citizens seem particularly attached
to the Nation-State in comparison with other political-territory
spaces. Consequently, neither can the notions of a “Europe of
regions” or of “regionalization of the globalized space” challenge
the Nation-State model. The centuries-long formation process of
the Nation-State aids understanding of how its success lies in the
strength and distinctiveness of its identitary system. This also
explains why the Nation-State is able to respond to critical
moments, when it proves able to draw on surprising resources in
order to deal with identitary challenges.
8. On the “value” of national identity
The continuing centrality of the Nation-State and national
identity also depend on the “good reasons” in their favor. These
“good reasons” are linked to democracy viewed as a “political
value” (or as a “meta public good”).
Historically, the Nation-State has been the “container” of
democracy, that is, the political space in which democratization
has taken place. The Nation-State is obviously not the only
historical container of democracy, but it has certainly been the one
best equipped to develop mass liberal democracy and its
“constitutive elements” [see Nevola 2007a]. This means not so
much that the Nation-State is the only environment favourable to
democracy as that the establishment and consolidation of a
democracy take place in a political space that has already been
“unified”. The type of political unity may change over time, but
unification remains the necessary condition for democracy [see
Dahl 1990; Linz, Stepan 1996; Nevola 2007a].
Democracy is, among other things, the acceptance of
differences and divisions; it is freedom, pluralism and
competition. The individuals and groups that form a democracy
may divide and enter into conflict with each other but only once
53
they have defined “who they are”: in other words, after they have
established themselves as the “we” that comprises the variety of
ideas and interests sustained by those individuals and groups [see
Rokkan 1999; Walzer 1983; Dahl 1990; Linz, Stepan 1996]. This
close and virtuous interdependence between the “unified political
space” (Nation-State) and the “pluralist political space”
(democracy) does not concern solely the moment of genesis of a
democratic system. The subsequent practice of democratic
citizenship itself requires the precious resource of national identity
so that it can be nourished and provide citizens with “benefits and
rights” and allocate right and duties. This argument is related to
the view of democratic citizenship as a “meta public good”; and
like any other public good, democracy entails “costs and duties” in
its production, allocation and distribution [see Nevola 1994a].
Within this theoretical framework we have to underline that a
political community preserves its democratic integration and
legitimation on the condition that it safeguards some essential
factors of “civic co-living”: freedom of expression and
neutrality/certainty of law; division and balance of powers;
political equality, pluralism and representation; monetary transfers
and services for a minimum level of well-being and social security
[see Nevola 1994a]. These elements of “civic co-living” represent
“benefits” for the citizens (the variety of rights and goods). But
maintaining and nourishing the “benefits” provided by a
democratic citizenship system requires that a political community
must have members willing to assume the relative “costs”. In this
case we refer to “costs” such as tolerance of diversity; lawful
behavior and compliance with rules; political participation and
democratic vigilance; taxation and voluntary work [see Nevola
1994a]. When (or if) this balance between benefits and costs
(rights and duties) is lacking, or comes under strong pressure, the
survival of democracy is at risk, or it may decline in quality. On
this view, the citizenship benefits/costs balance refers to a
“critical threshold”: that is, it refers to minimum levels of citizen
willingness to support the costs of civic-democratic cohabitation.
Below this threshold, the allocation of the benefits and the
conditions themselves for a political-democratic system are at risk.
The problem of the “critical threshold” formulated in terms of
costs/benefits and their balance shows that democracy possesses
54
a “utilitarian structure” for the production and allocation of public
goods. However, “democratic utilitarianism” may sometimes be
inefficient or ineffective, or at any rate unable to achieve the
objective pursued. “Democratic authoritarianism” [see Almond,
Powell 1966, 2th edition 1978] is an alternative to the democratic
utilitarianism sometimes employed by democratic regimes. But
there is a further resource that a democratic community can use
before it resorts to solutions of “democratic authoritarianism”: it
is precisely this resource that is denoted with the notion of
“political identity”. By virtue of their “belonging resources”,
groups and individuals assume costs and duties in the production
of democratic citizenship which exceed their own benefits and
rights: that is, they “pay” in terms of attitudes and conducts, time
and money for others unable or unwilling to do so. An important
role in such a situation is played by political identity and its
dimensions: reciprocal recognition, loyalty, solidarity, trust,
civicness 67.
The “sense of belonging”, as we know, may assume different
features,
some
more
“universalistic”,
others
more
“particularistic” 68. But one of its typical political (and usually
territorial) forms is certainly the Nation-based one. This form has
historically predominated in the Western world, at least in the last
two or three centuries. The maturation or the deficit of a sense of
national belonging consequently involve, positively or negatively,
the sources (“virtues”) of “reciprocity” on which a political
community can count to maintain the balance between costs and
benefits (rights and duties) in the production and allocation of the
public good represented by democratic citizenship 69.
But what is the specific feature to which the concept of national
identity/belonging refers? National identity is a case of political
67 Eisenstadt [1999] has stressed the intimate connection among democracy, trust,
collective identity and Nation.
68 In the former case inspired by criteria regulating inclusion, such as, for example,
agreement-aimed dialogical Diskurs, the “veil of ignorance” in “its original position”, the
competences of rationality and argumentative neutrality, and human rights. See,
respectively, Habermas [1981; 1992]; Rawls [1971]; Ackerman [1984]; Bobbio [1990]. In the
latter case inspired, for instance, by criteria regulating territorial inclusion (the local
community) or functional inclusion (the social class). See on the one hand, Shils [1993];
Etzioni [1995]; on the other, Parkin [1979]; Esping-Andersen [1985].
69 In this context it is useful to recall the concept of “civic virtues”. See e. g. Dagger
[1997].
55
identity on a territorial basis – a successful historical case that has
prevailed over its territory-identitary rivals. Although a national
identity requires the existence of “shared” elements (of various
kinds), this does not entail that a national political community is
necessarily “homogenous”, “totalitarian” or “exclusive”. Sharing
and identification reflect the existence of a “connective texture”
(socio-cultural, ethical-political, institutional, symbolic) resulting
from “strings” of different colours. The role of such a texture is
to hold together even pluralist and conflictual societies like the
contemporary ones. In light of such recognition of the political
pluralism it becomes decisive, when we talk about fatherland and
Nation, to distinguish between a “democratic patriotism” and a
“totalitarian patriotism” 70.
It is clear that not all Nation-States are democratic. Nor are
they all fertile ground for democracy: in so far as they are
successful political units, they are necessary but not sufficient conditions
for the birth and growth of democratic systems. Moreover, not all
types of national identity prove to be fruitful resources for
democracy. National identity may in fact assume, and has done so
in history, different features. In the past as well as the present we
find national identities that are closed, exclusive, monist, monoethnic. These are national identities “dissonant” or “regressive”
with respect to the principles of democratic pluralism. However,
since the end of the XVIII century (see in particular the United
States, France) an open and inclusive type of national identity has
progressively imposed itself – also in regard to ethnic and cultural
differences. This is the case of the so-called “civic-political”
Nation, the “Nation of citizens” or “constitutional patriotism”.
Despite its problems and its limitations, the Nation-State, with
its political-identitary profile, has proved able to respond
positively to the requirements of modern democracy. In many
cases the Nation-State has also passed the democratization test.
By contrast, the democratic test seems more problematic for the
political project of radical independentist regionalism.
70 For a socio-political analysis of the bonds of patriotic identity and national
belonging see the important and unjustly forgotten Grodzins [1956], which draws, with
subtlety and a wealth of examples, an original distinction between democratic patriotism
and totalitarian patriotism with interesting implications for the most genuine meaning to be
attributed to “constitutional patriotism”. See Nevola [2003c].
56
Some regionalisms seek to give life to new political units
through the separation of a regional area from the Nation-State.
Opposed to the multicultural, multi-ethnic or multi-national
features of the Nation-State, they emphasis their own particular
identities characterized by cultural or ethnic homogeneity. If
successful, this kind of regional claim would create political
regimes failing the democracy test. It would do so because along
this route there would emerge political regimes of “ethnocratic”
type characterized by a total liberal-democratic deficit; or
“ethnodemocratic” regimes characterized by a milder liberaldemocratic deficit. A further case still remains: that of
regionalisms which seek to create new political units open to the
many faces of democratic pluralism. But in this case their claims
for self-determination and self-government cannot be coherently
founded on solely ethnic or historical-cultural homogeneous
bases. These would be regionalisms which put themselves forward
as new democratic Nation-States on a smaller scale. This scenario
poses the problem of the “dimensions” of the political democratic
unit: a classic problem in both democratic history and doctrines
(Johannes Althusius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Madison) [see
Dahl 1990].
Probably the best argument for the advocates of “small-scale
democracy” is that, in small units, political processes are closer to
citizens and it is possible to achieve a more immediate and solid
collective solidarity. Even presuming that these positive aspects
are welcome for the equality of a democratic system, they still
entail other problematic aspects for collective life: fragmentation
of the international system into numerous small units, which
increases the likelihood of conflict; greater difficulties in the
governance of international problems; the weakness of political
units in their relationships with other units; low structural and
functional differentiation of society; limits on the ability to
produce public goods responding to the current standards of
contemporary developed societies. Finally, the good principle of
the proximity of citizens to the decision-making system can be
realized within a federal arrangement as well.
From all this derives a deficit of political identity and a certain
“democratic ambiguity” in the regional alternative to the NationState. And Nation-State persists in contemporary politics,
57
revealing to be the best option that citizens have in their hands
when they look at organizing in a democratic way their public life.
58
REFERENCES
Ackerman, B.A.
1984 Social Justice in the Liberal State, New Haven, Yale
University Press.
2004 The Emergency Constitution, in «Yale Law Journal», 113.
Allum, P.
1988 Cultura o opinioni. Su alcuni dubbi epistemologici, in «Il
Politico», 2.
Almond, G.A.
1960 Introduction: A Functional Approache to Comparative Politics, in
G.A. Almond, J.S. Coleman (eds), The Politics of Developing
Areas, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
1990 A Discipline Divided. Schools and Sects in Political Science,
London, Sage.
Almond, G.A., Powell, G.B. jr.
1966 Comparative Politics. A Developmental Approach, Boston,
Little Brown (2th edition 1978).
Almond, G.A., Verba, S. (eds)
1963 The Civic Culture, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Anderson, B.
1983 Imagined Communities, London, Verso.
Appiah, K.A.
2006 Cosmopolitism Ethics in a World of Strangers, New York,
Norton & Co.
Apter, D.E.
2003 Compiere scelte razionali in scienza politica, in «Quaderni di
Scienza Politica», 1.
Assmann, J.
1992 Die Kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und Politische
Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, München, Beck.
59
Auerbach, E.
1948 Introduction aux etudes de philology romane, Frankfurt,
Klostermann.
1958 Literatursprache und Publikum in der lateinischen Spätantike und
im Mittelalter, Bern, Franke.
Azzariti, G.
2005 Critica della democrazia identitaria, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
Badie, B.
1995 La fin des territories, Paris, Fayard.
1999 Un monde sans souveraineté, Paris, Arthéme Fayard.
Baechler, J.
2011 Le concept d’identité, in «Commentaire», 133.
Baldassarre, A.
2002 Globalizzazione contro democrazia, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
Banchoff, T., Smith, M.P. (eds)
1999 Legitimacy and the European Union. The Contested Polity,
London, Routledge.
Banting, K., Kymlicka, W.
2006 Multiculturalism and the Welfare State. Recognition and
Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Barbano, F.
1983 Opinione pubblica e bisogni di identità, in G. Grossi (a cura di),
Comunicazione politica, Milano, Angeli.
Barber, B.R.
1995 Jihad vs. McWorld, New York, Random House.
Bauman, Z.
2000 In Search of Politics, London, Polity Press.
2001 Community, London, Polity Press.
2003 Intervista sull’identità, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
Beck, U.
1997 Was ist Globalisierung?, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
2002 Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter, Frankfurt,
Suhrkamp.
Bellah, R.N. et al.
1985 Habits of the Heart. Individualism and Commitment in American
Life, Berkeley, University of California Press.
Bendix, R.
1964 Nation Building and Citizenship, New York, Wiley & Sons.
60
Bendix, R.
1978 Kings or People. The Power and the Mandate to Rule, Berkeley,
University of California Press.
Benhabib, S.
2002 The Claims of Cultures. Equality and Diversity in the Global
Era, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Beran, H.
1987 The Consent Theory of Political Obligation, New York, Croom
Helm.
Berger, P.L., Berger, B., Kellner, H.
1973 The Homeless Mind. Modernization and Consciousness, New
York, Doubleday & Co.
Berger, P.L., Luckmann, Th.
1966 The Social Construction of Reality, New York, Doubleday &
Co.
1995 Modernität, Pluralismus und Sinnkrise, Guetersloh,
Bertelsmann Stifftung.
Berlin, I.
1969 Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
1990 The Crooked Timber of Humanity. Chapters in the Histories of
Ideas, London.
Betz, H.-G.
2004 Le droite populiste en Europa. Extrême et démocrat?, Paris,
Autrement.
Birbaum, P.
1992 Nationalism: A Comparison between France and Germany, in
«International Social Science Quarterly», 133.
Birbaum, P. (sous la direction de)
1997 Sociologie des nationalismes, Paris, Press Universitaires de
France.
Bobbio, N.
1990 L’età dei diritti, Torino, Einaudi.
Bonazzi, T., Dunne, M. (a cura di)
1994 Cittadinanza e diritti nelle società multiculturali, Bologna, il
Mulino.
Bordieu, P.
1996 Champ politique, champ de sciences sociales, champ journalistique,
in «Cahiers GRS», Vol. 15, Université Lumiére de Lyon.
61
Bordieu, P.
2000 Propos sur le champ politique, Lyon, Preses Universitaires de
Lyon.
Breton, A., Galeotti, G., Salmon, P., Wintrobe, R.
1995 Nationalism and Rationality, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Breully, J.
1993 Nationalism and the State, Manchester, Manchester
University Press.
Brezezinski, Z.
1993 Out of Control, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Brubaker, R.
1992 Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
1996 Nationalism Reframed, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
Brunn, G.
1995 Regionalismus in Europa, in «Comparative», 5 (4).
Buchanan, A.
1991 Secession, Boulder (Colo.), Westview.
Burgess, M. (ed.)
1986 Federalism and Federation in Western Europe, London, Croom
Helm.
Burgess, M., Gagnon, A.-G. (eds)
1993 Comparative Federalism and Federation. Competing Traditions
and Future Directions, New York-London, Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
Caciagli, M.
1988 Quante Italie? Persistenza e trasformazione delle culture politiche
subnazionali, in «Polis», 7, 3.
2003 Regioni d’Europa, Bologna, il Mulino.
Calhoun, C.
1991 The Problem of Identity in Collective Action, in J. Huber (ed.),
Macro-Micro Linkages in Sociology, Newbury Park (Calif.),
Sage.
Canovan, M.
1999 Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy, in
«Political Studies», XLVII.
62
Cassese, S.
2002 La crisi dello Stato, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
Castells, M.
1997 The Power of Identity, Oxford, Blackwell.
Chisholm, M., Smith, D.M. (eds)
1990 Shared Spaces, Diveded Spaces, London, Unwin Hyman.
Clark, I.
1997 Globalisation and Fragmentation. International Relations in the
Twentieth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Cofrancesco, D.
2010 La crisi dello Stato nazionale non è la crisi della comunità politica,
in «Foedus», 28.
Connor, W.
1994 Ethnonationalism, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Cooper, R.
2003 The Breaking of Nations, London, Atlantic Books.
Coppieters, B., Huysseune, M. (eds)
2002 Secession, History and the Social Sciences, Brussels, VUB
Brussels University Press.
Coppola, P. (a cura di)
1997 Geografia politica delle regioni italiane, Torino, Einaudi.
Cordellier, S., Poisson, E. (sous la direction de)
1995 Nations et nationalismes, Paris, La Découverte.
Courbage, Y., Todd, E.
2007 Le redez-vous des civilisations, Paris, Seuil.
Crespi, P., Segatori, R. (a cura di)
1996 Multiculturalismo e democrazia, Roma, Donzelli.
Cviic, C.
1993 Rifare i Balcani, Bologna, il Mulino.
Dagger, R.
1997 Civic Virtues. Rights, Citizenship and Republican Liberalism,
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Dahl, R.A.
1971 Poliarchy. Participation and Opposition, New Haven, Yale
University Press.
1990 Democracy and its Critics, New Haven, Yale University
Press.
Dahrendorf, R.
1997 Warum Europa?, in «Merkur», 568.
63
Dahrendorf, R., Furet, F., Geremek, B.
1992 La democrazia in Europa, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
De Benoit, A.
2005 Identità e comunità, Napoli, Guida.
De Swann, A.
1988 In the Care of the State, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Deutsch, K.
1953 Nationalism and Social Communication, Cambridge, Mit Press.
De Winter, L., Tuersan, H. (eds)
1998 Regional Parties in Western Europe, London, Routledge.
Diamanti, I.
1993 La Lega, Roma, Donzelli.
1996 Il male del Nord. Lega, localismo, secessione, Roma, Donzelli.
Dubar, C.
2000 La socialisation. Constructions des identitiés socials, Paris,
Armand Colin.
Dunn, J. (ed.)
1995 Contemporary Crisis of the Nation-State ?, Oxford-Cambridge,
Blackwell.
Easton, D.
1953 The Political System, New York, Knopf.
Edelman, M.
1976 The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Chicago, University of Illinois
Press.
Elias, N.
1939 Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. II: Wandlungen der
Gesellschaft, Basel, Verlag Haus zum Falken.
Eisenstadt, S.N.
1993 The Constitution of Collective Identity, in Various Authors,
Lebensverhältnisse und soziale Konflikte in neuen Europa,
Frankfurt, Campus.
1999 Paradoxes of Democracy, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Eisenstadt, S.N., Rokkan (eds)
1973 Building States and Nations, London, Sage.
Elazar, D.J.
1987 Exploring Federalism, Tuscaloosa, The University of
Alabama Press.
64
Esping-Andersen, G.
1985 Cittadinanza e socialismo nel welfare state, in «Stato e Mercato»,
14.
Etzioni, A.
1965 Political Unification, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
1995 New Communitarian Thinking, Charlotteville, The University
of Virginia Press.
Flatman, R.E.
1972 Political Obligation, New York, Atheneum.
Freddi, G.
1989 Burocrazia, democrazia e governabilità, in G. Freddi (a cura di),
Scienza dell’amministrazione e politiche pubbliche, Roma,
Carocci.
Freund, J.
1995 Il terzo, il nemico, il conflitto. Materiali per una teoria del Politico,
Milano, Giuffrè.
Friedman, L.M.
1999 The Horizontal Society, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Fukuyama, F.
1992 The End of History and the Last Man, New York, Free Press.
2004 State-building. Governance and World Order in the 21st Century,
Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Galli, C.
2001 Spazi politici. L’età moderna e l’età globale, Bologna, il Mulino.
Gallino, L.
1982 Identità, identificazione, in «Laboratorio Politico», 5-6.
Garton Ash, T.
1992 Le rovine dell’impero. Europa centrale 1980-1990, Milano,
Mondadori.
Gellner, E.
1983 Nations and Nationalism, London, Blackwell.
Geertz, C.
1999 Mondo globale, mondi locali. Cultura e politica alla fine del
ventesimo secolo, Bologna, il Mulino.
Giddens, A.
1990 The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Gierke, O. Von
1880 Johannes Althusius und die Entwicklung der naturrechtlichen
Staatentheorien, Breslavia, M. & M. Markus.
65
Girard, R.
2001 Celui par qui le scandale arrive, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer.
Goffman, I.
1961 Asylums, Chicago, Aldina.
Gordon, L., Gergen, J. (eds)
1968 The Self in Social Interaction, New York, Wiley.
Gourevitch, P.A.
1979 The Reemergence of “Peripheral Nationalism”, in «Comparative
Studies in Society and History», 21.
Greenfeld, L.
1993 Nationalisms and Democracy: The Nature of the Relationship and
the Cases of England, France, and Russia, in F.D. Weil, J.
Hoffman, M. Gautier (eds), Research on Democracy and
Society, London, Jai Press.
Grilli di Cortona, P.
2003 Stati, nazioni e nazionalismi in Europa, Bologna, il Mulino.
Grimm, H.-D.
1994 Braucht Europe eine Verfassung?, Speech to the Carl
Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung.
Grodzins, M.
1956 The Loyal and the Disloyal, Chacago, University of Chicago
Press.
Guehénno, J.-M.
1993 La fin de la démocratie, Paris, Flammarion.
Habermas, J.
1974 Können komplexe Gesellschaften eine vernünftige Identität
ausbilden?, in J. Habermas, D. Henrich, Zwei Reden,
Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
1981 Theorie kommunikative Handeln, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
1990 Die nachholende Revolution, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
1991 Staatsbürgerschaft und nationale Identität, Erker, St. Gallen.
1992 Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts
und des demokratishen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
1993 Struggles for Recognition in Constitutional States, in «European
Journal of Philosophy», 2.
1996 Die Einbeziehung des Anderen. Studien zur politichen Theorie,
Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
2005 Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Philosophische Aufsätze,
Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
66
Halbwachs, M.
1925 Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Paris, Alcan.
1950 La mémoire collective, Paris, Alcan.
Hall, S.
2008 Identités et cultures, Paris, Editions Amsterdam.
Haller, M.
2003 Identità e orgoglio nazionale in Europa, in Nevola 2003a.
Haller, M., Richter, R. (eds)
1994 Toward a European Union. Political Trends in Europe, New
York, Shape.
Hampshire, S.
2000 Justice is Conflict, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Harvey, C.
1994 The Rise of Regional Europe, London, Routledge.
Harvey, D.
2005 A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Haupt, H.-G., Mueller, M.G., Woolf, S. (eds)
1998 Regional and National Identities in Europe in the XIXth and XX
Centuries, The Hague, Kluwer Law International.
Hechter, M.
1975 Internal Colonialism, London, Routledge.
Held, D.
1995 Democracy and Global Order, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Hermet, G.
1996 Historie des nations et du nationalisme en Europe, Paris, Seuil.
Hintze, O.
1962 Staat und Verfassung, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht.
1964 Soziologie und Geschichte, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht.
Hobsbawm, E.J.
1994 Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, London,
Random House.
2007 La fine dello Stato, Milano, Rizzoli.
Hobsbawm, E.J., Ranger, T. (eds)
1983 The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
67
Honneth, A.
1992 Kampf um Anerkennung. Grammatik sozialer Konflikte,
Frankfurt, Suhrkamp.
Horowitz, D.L.
1985 Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley, University of California
Press.
Huntington, S.P.
1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,
New York, Simon & Schuster.
2004 Who Are We?, New York, Simon & Schuster.
Huysseune, M.
2006 Modernity and Secession. The Social Sciences and the Political
Discourse of Lega Nord in Italy, Oxford-New York,
Berghahn Books.
Huysseune, M. (ed.)
2011 Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism. Comparing Flanders and
Northern Italy, Brussels, The Royal Flemish Academy of
Belgium for Science and the Arts.
Jullien, F.
2008 De l’universel, de l’uniforme, du commun et du dialogue entres les
cultures, Paris, Fayard.
Kellas, J.G.
1991 The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity, London, Mac
Millan.
Kertzer, D.I.
1988 Rituals, Politics, and Power, New Haven, Yale University
Press.
King, P.
1982 Federalism and Federation, London, Croom Helm.
Krasner, S.D.
1999 Sovereignty, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Kymlicka, W.
1995 Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kymlicka, W., Opalski, M. (eds)
2001 Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported? Western Political Theory and
Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe, New York, Oxford
University Press.
68
Kupchan, C.A. (ed.)
1995 Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe, Ithaca,
Cornell University Press.
Laclau, E.
2005 On Populist Reason, London, Verso.
Laplantine, F.
1999 Je, nous et les autres, Paris, Le Pommier.
Lasch, C.
1995 The Revolt of tjhe Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, New
York-London, Norton & Company.
Lee Mudge, S.
2008 What is neo-liberalism?, in «Socio-Economic Review», 4.
Lemberg, E.
1964 Nationalismus, Reinbeck bei Hamburg, Rowholt.
Lepenies, W.
1992 Folgen einer unerhörten begebeheit. Die Deutschen nach der
Vereinigung, Berlin, Siedler.
Lepsius, R.M.
1982 Nation und Nationalismus in Deutschland, in H.A. Winkler
(hrsg.), Nationalismus in der Welt von heute, Goettingen,
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
1997 Integrazione economico-politica e pluralità culturale, in «Il
Mulino/Europa», 2.
Levi-Strauss, C. (sur la direction de)
1977 L’identité, Paris, Grasset & Frasquelle.
Lijphart, A.
1999 Patterns of Democracies, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Linz, J.J.
1995 Plurinazionalismo e democrazia, in «Rivista Italiana di Scienza
Politica», 1.
Linz, J.J., Stepan, A.
1996 Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, Baltimore,
Johns Hopkins Press.
Lipset, S.M., Rokkan, S.
1967 Cleavages Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments, in
S.M. Lipset, S. Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter
Alignments, New York, Free Press.
69
Lukacs, J.
2005 Democracy and Populism. Fear and Hatred, New Haven, Yale
University Press.
Luverà, B.
1999 I confini dell’odio, Roma, Editori Riuniti.
Maalouf, A.
1998 Les identités meurtrires, Paris, Grasset & Frasquelle.
Mac Intyre, A.
1981 After Virtue, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press.
Mc Grew, A.
1992 A Global Society, in S. Hall, D. Held, T. Mc Grew (eds),
Modernity and its Futures, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Mac kenzie, W.J.M.
1978 Political Identity, Harmondworth, Penguin Books.
Maier, Ch.S.
1988 The Unmasterable Past. History, Holocaust, and German
National Identity, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Maravall, J.A.
1972 Estado moderno y mentalidad social, Madrid, Revista de
Occidente.
Marshall, T.H.
1950 Citizenship and Social Class, in T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and
Social Class and Other Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Martin, D.-C.
1995 The Choice of Identity, in «Social Identity», 1.
Mazower, M.
1998 Dark Continent, London, Allan Lane.
Melucci, A.
1982 L’invenzione del presente. Movimenti, identità, bisogni individuali,
Bologna, il Mulino.
Mendras, H.
1997 L’Europe des Européens. Sociologie de l’Europe occidentale, Paris,
Gallimard.
Meny, Y., Surel, Y.
2000 Par le peuple, pour le peuple, Paris, Arthéme Fayard.
Meny, Y., Surel, Y. (eds.)
2002 Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Houndmills (N. Y.),
Palgrave.
70
Miglio, G., Barbera, A.
1997 Federalismo e secessione. Un dialogo, Milano, Mondadori.
Minahan, J.
2002 Encyclopedia of States Nations: Ethnic and National Groups
Around the World, Westpost-London, Greenwood.
Mosse, G.L.
1974 The Nationalisation of the Masses, New York, Ferting.
Mouffe, C.
2005 On the Political, London, Routledge.
Moïsi, D.
2009 The Geopolitics of Emotions, New York, Doubleday.
Mueller-Funk, W. (hrsg.)
1992 Neue Heimaten, Neue Fremden, Wien, Picus.
Nahayho, B., Swoboda, V.
1990 Soviet Disunion, New York, Free Press.
Nevola, G.
1990 I movimenti sociali tra Scilla e Cariddi. Logica di azione collettiva e
potenziale di incertezza, in «Quaderni di Sociologia», 13.
1994a Osservazioni sui costi dei diritti di cittadinanza, in P. Donati, I.
Colozzi (a cura di), La cultura della cittadinanza oltre lo Stato
assistenziale, Roma, Edizioni Lavoro.
1994b Conflitto e coercizione. Modello di analisi e studio di casi,
Bologna, il Mulino.
1997a Il ritorno della nazione, in «Il Politico», 180.
1997b In federalismo ha un futuro, in «Rassegna Italiana di
Sociologia», 4.
1998 La politica della secessione, in «Rivista Italiana di Scienza
Politica», 1.
2001a Education and Political Education between National Identity and
European Citizenship, in M. Haller (ed.), The Making of
European Union. The Contributions of the Social Sciences, BerlinNew York, Springer.
2001b Nie ma democracji bez unifikacji. Analizza procesu integraci
europejeskiej i rzeczwistsci politycznej, in A. Mani, B. Plonki
(eds), Do jakiej Unii zmierzamy?, Krakov, Universitet
Jagiellonski.
2002 Unione Europea, sfida identitaria e patriottismo della cittadinanza
multinazionale, in «Foedus», 3.
71
Nevola, G.
2003a From the “Republic of the Parties” to a “Fatherland for Italians”,
in «Journal of Modern Italian Studies», 8 (2).
2003b Oltre la retorica della società civile, in «Palomar», 14.
2003c Quale patria per gli italiani?, in Nevola 2003d.
2006 Non solo “oppio dei popoli”. Riti della nazione e democrazia
italiana tra religione civile e patriottismo costituzionale, in M.
Ridolfi (a cura di), Rituali civili. Storie nazionali e memorie
pubbliche nell’Europa contemporanea, Roma, Gangemi.
2007a Democrazia Costituzione Identità. Prospettive e limiti dell’integrazione europea, Torino-Novara, Utet-De Agostini.
2007b Il malessere della democrazia contemporanea e la sfida dell’“incantesimo democratico”, in «Il Politico», 1.
2007c Il modello identitario dello Stato-nazione. Genesi, natura e
persistenza, in «Quaderni di Sociologia», 44.
2010 Comunitarismo, in A. D’Orsi (a cura di), Gli Ismi della politica,
Roma, Viella.
Nevola, G. (a cura di)
2003d Una patria per gli italiani? La questione nazionale tra storia,
cultura e politica, Roma, Carocci.
2003e Altre Italie. Identità nazionale e Regioni a statuto speciale, Roma,
Carocci.
Newman, S.
1996 Ethnoregional Conflict in Democracies, Westpost-London,
Greenwood.
Offe, C.
1993 Il tunnel. L’Europa dell’Est dopo il comunismo, Roma,
Donzelli.
Ollivier, B. (sur la direction de)
2009 Les identités collectives à l’heure de la mondialisation, Paris,
CNRS Editions.
Ohmae, K.
1995 The End of the Nation State. The Rise of Regional Economies,
New York, Free Press.
Organski, A.F.K.
1965 The Stages of Political Development, New York, Knopf.
Panebianco, A.
1997 Guerrieri democratici. Le democrazie e la politica di potenza,
Bologna, il Mulino.
72
Parkin, F.
1979 Marxism and Class Theory. A Bourgeois Critique, London,
Tavistock.
Pateman, C.
1979 The Problem of Political Obligation, Chichester, Wiley.
Perulli, P. (a cura di)
1998 Neoregionalismo, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri.
Pitkin, H.
1965-1966 Obligation and Consent, I-II, in «American Political
Science Review», 59-60.
Pizzorno, A.
1977 Scambio politico e identità collettiva nel conflitto di classe, in C.
Crouch, A. Pizzorno (a cura di), Conflitti in Europa,
Milano, Etas.
Pollini, G.
1987 Appartenenza e identità, Milano, Angeli.
Portinaro, P.P.
1996 Interesse nazionale e interesse globale, Milano, Angeli.
Pye, L.W.
1966 Aspects of Political Development, Boston, Little Brown.
Rawls, J.
1971 A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Remotti, F.
2001 Contro l’identità, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
2010 L’ossessione identitaria, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
Reinhard, W.
1999 Geschichte der Staatsgewalt, München, Beck.
Rex, J.
1995 Ethnic Identity and the Nation State. The Political Sociology of
Multicultural Societies, in «Social Identities», 1.
Ricoeur, P.
2000 La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris, Seuil.
Riker, W.H.
1986 The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven, Yale
University Press.
Rokkan, S.
1968 The Structuring of Mass Politics in the Smaller European
Democracies, in «Comparative Study of Society and
History», 2.
73
Rokkan, S.
1969 Methods and Models in the Comparative Study of Nation-building,
in «Acta Sociologica», 2.
1971 Nation-building, Cleavages Formation and the Structuring of Mass
Politics, in S. Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties. Approaches to
the Comparative Study of the Processes of Development, Oslo,
Universitetforlaget.
1975 Dimension of State Formation and Nation Building, in Tilly
1975b.
1981 Territories, Nations, Parties, in R.L. Merritt, B.M. Russett
(eds), From National Development to Global Community,
London, Allen & Unwin.
1999 State Formation, Nation-building, and Mass Politics in Europe
(Edited by P. Flora), Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Rokkan, S., Urwin, D.W.
1983 Economy, Territory, Identity. Politics of West European
Pheripheries, London, Sage.
Rokkan, S., Urwin, D.W. (eds)
1982 The Politics of Territorial Identities. Studies in European
Regionalism, London, Sage.
Rosenau, J.N., Czempiel, E.-O.
1992 Governance without Government: Order and Change in World
Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Rost, D.
2005 Social Sciences. Approaches to Collective Identity, Essentialism,
Constructivism and Strategic Essentialism, in Various Authors
2005.
Rost, D., Stoelting, E.
2005 Introduction, in Various Authors 2005.
Rotelli, E., Schiera, P. (a cura di)
1972-1974 Lo Stato moderno, 3 voll., Bologna, il Mulino.
Rupnik, J. (sous la direction de)
1995 Les déchirement des Nations, Paris, Seuil.
Rusconi, G.E.
1984 Scambio, minaccia, decisione, Bologna, il Mulino.
1993 Se cessiamo di essere una nazione, Bologna, il Mulino.
1996 La cittadinanza europea non crea il “popolo europeo”, in «Il
Mulino», 5.
74
Rustow, D.A.
1967 A World of Nations, Washington (D.C.), Brookings
Institutions.
Sandel, M.
1992 Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
2009 Justice, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sartori, G.
2000 Pluralismo, multiculturalismo e estranei, Milano, Rizzoli.
Sassen, S.
2006 Territory, Authority, Rights. From Medieval to Global
Assemblages, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
2007 A Sociology of Globalisation, New York, Norton & Co.
Scharpf, F.W.
1997 The Problem Solving Capacity of Multi-level Governance, Firenze,
Istituto Universitario Europeo.
Schiera, P. (a cura di)
1993 Le autonomie e l’Europa. Profili storici e comparati, Bologna, il
Mulino.
Schmitt, C.
1927 Begriff des Politischen, in «Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften»,
58.
1967 Die Tyrranei der Werte, in E.-W. Böckenförde (hrsg.),
Säkularization und Utopie, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer.
Schmitter, Ph.C.
2000 How to Democratize European Union – and why Bother?,
Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield.
Schulze, H.
1994 Staat und Nation in der europäischen Geschichte, München,
Beck.
Sciolla, L.
2007 Dimenticare l’identità o le concezioni riduzioniste dell’identità?
Note sulle oscillazioni di un concetto, in «La Società degli
Individui», 2.
Sciolla, L. (a cura di)
1983 Identità, Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier.
Seiler, D.-L.
1994 Les parties autonomistes, Paris, Presses Universitaires de
France.
75
Seligman, A.B.
2000 Modernity’s Wager, Cambridge, Princeton University Press.
Sen, A.
2006 Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny, New YorkLondon, Norton & Company.
Shils, E.
1993 Nazionalismo, nazionalità e società civile, in AA.VV., Le libertà
dei contemporanei, Conferenze “Fulvio Guerrini” 1984-1993,
Torino, Centro di Ricerca e Documentazione Luigi
Einaudi.
Shore, C.
1993 Inventing the “People”’s Europe: Critical Approaches to European
Community “Cultural Policy”, in «Man», 4.
Smith, A.D.
1981 The Ethnic Revival, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
1986 The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford, Blackwell.
1991 National Identity, London, Penguin Book.
1995 Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, London, Polity
Press.
2008 Cultural Foundations of Nations, London, Wiley & Sons.
Smith, B.C.
1985 Decentralization. The Territorial Dimension of the State, Boston,
Allen & Unwin.
Smith, D.A., Solinger, D.J., Topik, S.C. (eds)
1999 State and Sovereignty in the Global Economy, London,
Routledge.
Spruyt, H.
1994 The Sovereign State and its Competitors, Princeton, Princeton
University Press.
Sternhell, Z.
2006 Les anti-lumières, Paris, Arthème Fayard.
Strange, S.
1996 The Retreat of the State. The Diffusion of Power in the World
Economy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Taggart, P.
2000 Populism, Philadelphia, Open University Press.
Taguieff, P.-A.
1987 La force du préjugé, Paris, La Découverte.
76
Taguieff, P.-A.
1995a Nationalisme et antinationalisme. Le Débat sur l’identité française,
in Cordellier, Poisson 1995.
1995b Political Science Confronts Populism: From a Conceptual Mirage to
a Real Problem, in «Telos», 103.
2007 L’illusion populiste. Essais sur les démagogies de l’âge
démocratique, Paris, Berg International Editeurs.
Taylor, Ch.
1989 Sources of the Self. The Making of Modern Identity, Cambridge,
Harvard University Press.
1991 The Malaise of Modernity, Cambridge, Harvard University
Press.
1992 Multiculturalism and the “Politics of Recognition”, Princeton,
Princeton University Press.
Therborn, G.
1995 European Modernity and Beyond, London, Sage.
Thiesse, A.-M.
1999 La création des identités nazionales, Paris, Seuil.
Tilly, Ch.
1975a Reflections on the History of European State-Making, in Tilly
1975b.
1990 Coercion, Capital and European States, Malden (MA),
Blackwell.
Tilly, Ch. (ed.)
1975b The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton,
Princeton University Press.
Tiryakian, E.A., Rogowski, R. (eds)
1985 New Nationalism of the Developed World, Boston, Allen &
Unwin.
Todorov, T.
1989 Nous et los autres. La réflexion française sur la diversité humaine,
Paris, Seuil.
2008 La peur des barbares, Paris, Laffont.
Touraine, A.
1983 Le due facce dell’identità, in Sciolla 1983.
1992 Critique de la Modernité, Paris, Arthème Fayard.
1997 Pourrons-nous vivre ensamble?, Paris, Arthème Fayard.
77
Tronconi, F.
2009 I partiti etnoregionalisti. La politica dell’identità territoriale in
Europa occidentale, Bologna, il Mulino.
Tullock, G.
1994 The New Federalist, Vancouver, Fraser Institute.
Turner, B., Hamilton, P. (eds)
1994 Citizenship, 2 voll., London, Routledge.
Tussman, J.
1960 Obligation and the Body Politic, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Twining, W.
1991 Issues of Self-Determination, Aberdeen, Aberdeen University
Press.
Various Authors
1990 Italia, Europa e nuove immigrazioni, Torino, Edizioni della
Fondazione Agnelli.
1991 A Est, la memoria ritrovata, Torino, Einaudi.
1995 What Future for the State?, in «Daedalus», 124.
2002 La guerre des dieux, in «Le Nouvelle Observateur», 46.
2005 New Regional Identities and Strategic Essentialism, MünsterHamburg-London, LIT Verlag.
Vovelle, M.
1976 Le métamorphoses de la fête en Provence de 1750-1820, Paris,
Aubier – Flammarion.
Waldenberg, M.
1994 Le questioni nazionali nell’Europa centro-orientale, Milano, Il
Saggiatore.
Walzer, M.
1970 Obligations, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
1977 Just and Unjust Wars, New York, Basic Books.
1983 Spheres of Justice, New York, Basic Books.
1991 Due specie di universalismo, in «MicroMega», 1.
Weber, M.
1922 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tübingen, Mohr.
Wehler, H.U.
2001 Nationalismus, München, Beck.
Williams, C.H. (ed.)
1982 National Separatism, Cardiff, University of Wales Press.
78
Williams, C.H., Kofman, E.
1989 Community Conflict. Partition and Nationalism, London,
Routledge.
Winch, P.
1958 The Idea of a Social Science, London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Woolf, S.
2000 The Political Discourse of Italian Regionalism, in C. Dipprer, A.
Nuezenadel (hrsg.), Europäische Sozialgeschchte, Berlin,
Duncker & Humblot.
Zerubavel, E.
2003 Time Maps. Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past,
Chicago, Chicago University Press.
Znaniecki, F.
1930-31 Studia nad antagonizmen do obcych, in «Przeglad
Socjlogiczny», 2-4.
79
Impaginazione a cura del supporto tecnico DSRS
Stampa a cura del
Servizio Stamperia e Fotoriproduzione
dell’Università degli Studi di Trento
2011
I QUADERNI DEL DIPARTIMENTO DI SOCIOLOGIA E RICERCA
SOCIALE costituiscono una iniziativa editoriale finalizzata alla diffusione in ambito universitario di materiale di ricerca, riflessioni teoriche
e resoconti di seminari di studio di particolare rilevanza. L’accettazione dei diversi contributi è subordinata all’approvazione di
un’apposita Commissione scientifica.
Dal 2006 la collana comprende una sezione (serie rossa) dedicata
ai contributi di giovani ricercatori e dal 2007 una serie verde riservata ai docenti e ricercatori ospiti del Dipartimento. La serie gialla
è riservata a “Lectio Magistralis” di studiosi e di studiose che hanno onorato con la loro presenza la Facoltà di Sociologia dell’Università di Trento.
1
E. BAUMGARTNER, L’identità nel cambiamento, 1983.
2
C. SARACENO, Changing the Gender Structure of Family
Organization, 1984.
3
G. SARCHIELLI, M. DEPOLO e G. AVEZZU’, Rappresentazioni del lavoro e identità sociale in un gruppo di lavoratori irregolari, 1984.
4
S. GHERARDI, A. STRATI (a cura di), Sviluppo e declino. La dimensione temporale nello studio delle organizzazioni,
1984.
5/6
A. STRATI (a cura di), The Symbolics of Skill, 1985.
7
G. CHIARI, Guida bibliografica alle tecniche di ricerca sociale,
1986.
8
M. DEPOLO, R. FASOL, F. FRACCAROLI, G.
SARCHIELLI, L’azione negoziale, 1986.
9
C. SARACENO, Corso della vita e approccio biografico,
1986.
10
R. PORRO (a cura di), Le comunicazioni di massa, 1987.
11/12 G. CHIARI, P. PERI, I modelli log-lineari nella ricerca sociologica, 1987.
13
S. GHERARDI, B. TURNER, Real Men Don’t Collect
Soft Data, 1987.
14
D. LA VALLE, Utilitarismo e teoria sociale: verso più efficaci
indicatori del benessere, 1988.
15
M. BIANCHI, R. FASOL, Il sistema dei servizi in Italia.
Parte prima: Servizi sanitari e cultura del cambiamento. A dieci
anni dalla riforma sanitaria. Parte seconda: Modelli di analisi e
filoni di ricerca. 1988.
16
B. GRANCELLI, Le dita invisibili della mano visibile. Mercati, gerarchie e clan nella crisi dell’economia di comando, 1990.
17
M. A. SCHADEE, A. SCHIZZEROTTO, Social Mobility of Men and Women in Contemporary Italy, 1990.
18
J. ECHEVERRIA, I rapporti tra stato, società ed economia in
America Latina, 1991.
19
D. LA VALLE, La società della scelta. Effetti del mutamento
sociale sull’economia e la politica, 1991.
20
A. MELUCCI, L’Aids come costruzione sociale, 1992.
21
S. GHERARDI, A. STRATI (a cura di), Processi cognitivi
dell’agire organizzativo: strumenti di analisi, 1994.
22
E. SCHNABL, Maschile e femminile. Immagini della differenza sessuale in una ricerca tra i giovani, 1994.
23
D. LA VALLE, La considerazione come strumento di regolazione sociale, 1995.
24
S. GHERARDI, R. HOLTI e D. NICOLINI, When
Technological Innovation is not Enough. Understanding the
Take up of Advanced Energy Technology, 1999.
25
D. DANNA, Cattivi costumi: le politiche sulla prostituzione
nell’Unione Europea negli anni Novanta, 2001.
26
F. BERNARDI, T. POGGIO, Home-ownership and Social
Inequality in Italy, 2002.
27
B. GRANCELLI, I metodi della comparazione: Alcuni area
studies e una rilettura del dibattito, 2002.
28
M.L. ZANIER, Identità politica e immagine dell’immigrazione
straniera, una ricerca tra gli elettori e i militanti di An e Ds a
Bologna, 2002.
29
D. NICOLINI, A. BRUNI, R. FASOL, Telemedicina:
Una rassegna bibliografica introduttiva, 2003.
30
G. CHIARI, Cooperative Learning in Italian School: Learning
and Democracy, 2003.
31
M. ALBERTINI, Who Were and Who are the poorest and
the richest people in Italy. The changing household’s characteristics of the people at the bottom and at the top of the income distribution, 2004.
32
D. TOSINI, Capitale sociale: problemi di costruzione di una
teoria, 2005.
33
A. COSSU, The Commemoration of Traumatic Events: Expiation, Elevation and Reconciliation in the Remaking of the Italian Resistance, 2006 (serie rossa).
34
A. COBALTI, Globalizzazione e istruzione nella Sociologia
dell’ Educazione in Italia, 2006 (serie blu).
35
L. BELTRAME, Realtà e retorica del brain drain in Italia.
Stime statistiche, definizioni pubbliche e interventi politici, 2007
(serie rossa).
36
A. ARVIDSSON, The Logic of the Brand, 2007 (serie verde).
37
G. M. CAMPAGNOLO, A sociology of the translation of
ERP systems to financial reporting, 2007 (serie rossa).
38
LABOR - P. CAPUANA, E. LONER, C.
PATERNOLLI, T. POGGIO, C. SANTINELLO, G.
VIVIANI, Le ricerche di Petronilla. Una guida alle fonti statistiche per l’analisi secondaria nella ricerca sociale, 2007 (serie
blu).
39
A. SCAGLIA, 25anni dell’Associazione di Sociologia. Materiali per scriverne la storia, 2007 (serie blu).
40
A. M. BRIGHENTI, Tra onore e dignità. Per una Sociologia
del rispetto, 2008 (serie rossa).
41
S. BENATI, G. CHIARI, I meccanismi dell’apprendimento
cooperativo: un approccio di scelta razionale, 2008 (serie blu).
42
A. COBALTI, L’istruzione in Africa, 2008 (serie blu).
43
P. WAGNER, The Future of Sociology:Understanding the
Transformations of the Social, 2009 (serie blu).
44
A. COBALTI, L’istruzione in America latina, 2009 (serie
blu).
45
P. BARBIERI, G. CUTULI, Equal Job, Unequal Pay.
Fixed Term Contracts and Wage Differentials in the Italian
Labor Market, 2009 (serie blu).
46
K. LIBERMAN with G. FELE, V. D’ANDREA, G.M.
CAMPAGNOLO, Y. CURZI, G. VISCUSI, Phenomenology and the Social Study of Information Systems: Conversations with Kenneth Liberman, 2009 (serie verde).
47
B. GRANCELLI, Cooperative e sviluppo locale nelle regioni
rurali dell’Europa Orientale. Paradossi dell’imprenditoria economica e sociale nella transizione, 2009 (serie blu).
48
P. ROSA, La svolta sociologica nelle relazioni internazionali:
tre approcci e tre filoni di ricerca, 2010 (serie blu).
49
A. M. BRIGHENTI, The Publicness of Public Space. On the
Public Domain, 2010 (serie rossa).
50
R. POLI, The Complexity of Self-reference. A Critical Evaluation of Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems, 2010 (serie blu).
51
A. COBALTI, India, 2010 (serie blu).
52
A. COBALTI, L’istruzione in India, 2010 (serie blu).
53
P. BLOKKER, Constitutionalism and Constitutional Anomie
in the New Europe, 2010 (serie verde).
54
O. NICCOLI, Immagini e metafore della società in età moderna, 2011 (serie gialla).
55
M.B.C. GARZIA, Dalle neuroscienze cognitive alla sociologia,
2011 (serie blu).
56
Premessa di S. ABBRUZZESE, V. ALNET, M.
BALAS, C. BARNAO, I. JONVEAUX, L. MEGLIO,
F. NIRO, G. RECH, D. TURCO, E. ZAPPONI, La
dimensione religiosa: problemi di metodo, 2011 (serie rossa).
57
G. CHIARI, Educazione interculturale e apprendimento cooperativo: teoria e pratica della educazione tra pari, 2011 (serie
blu).
Responsabile editoriale: Antonio Cobalti
(antonio.cobalti@soc.unitn.it)
Responsabile tecnico: Luigina Cavallar
(luigina.cavallar@soc.unitn.it)
Una copia cartacea degli ultimi quaderni può essere richiesta,
fino ad esaurimento delle scorte, alla segreteria di Dipartimento:
Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale
Università di Trento
Via Verdi, 26 - 38122 Trento - Italia
Tel. 0461/281322
Fax 0461/281348
Web: http://www.unitn.it/dsrs
Politics, Identity, Territory.
The “Strength” and “Value” of Nation-State,
the Weakness of Regional Challenge
Gaspare Nevola
The post Cold War age reveals itself as being characterized mostly by the flourishing of “identity
politics”. Identitary issues affect the public dimension of collective life and they often develop
into economic, legal, political terms. There are many types of collective identity. We would clarify
some of them in order to focus the analytical tools that are necessary to face the phenomena we
are interested with: national and regional identities. Crucial in our argument are the concept of
“political identity” and its “territorial” dimension. This concept and this dimension consent to
compare Nation-State and (sub-national) region as space of collective life, and their “authoritative”
degree. According to this subject this essay will treat the following points: the return of identity
politics nowadays (section 1); the concept of collective identity (section 2); the many faces of
collective identity (section 3); the relationship among politics, territory and identity, analyzed
through the paradigmatic case of Nation-state and national identity (section 4); the structuring of
political space between centre and peripheries, where we consider how the dominance of NationState model has to face persisting of territorial cleavages (section 5); the case of the regional issue
(section 6); the “strength” and the “value” of Nation-State (sections 7 and 8).
Gaspare Nevola is professor of Political Science, Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento. He is
member of the Board of the Doctoral School in Political Science, University of Pavia. His study
areas include: political culture, identity and public rituals; transformation and legitimation
problem of contemporary democracy; liberal and communitarian political theory; religion and
politics in post-secular democratic society; political unification process. Among his publications: A
Constitutional Patriotism for Italian Democracy, in «Bulletin of Italian Politics» (2011, forthcoming);
The Territorial-Identitary Side of a Democracy, in M. Huysseune (ed.), Contemporary Centrifugal
Regionalism, The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (2011); Democrazia,
Costituzione, Identità, Utet (2007); Il malessere della democrazia contemporanea e la sfida
dell’“incantesimo democratico”, in «Il Politico» (2007); Una patria per gli italiani?, Carocci (2003).
ISSN 1828 - 955 X
Politics, Identity, Territory.
The “Strength” and “Value” of Nation-State,
the Weakness of Regional Challenge
Gaspare Nevola
DIPARTIMENTO DI SOCIOLOGIA E RICERCA SOCIALE
QUADERNO 58